Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I was presented with a report that will be published later today which, hot off the press, shows that the figure for 2012 to 2013, the academic year that has just ended, was 526,426 in primary school, an increase of 9,966, and in the post-primary sector the figure was 327,320, an increase of 4,790. In round figures, the top figure in 2016 to 2017 - the first academic year after the next general election, to bring it close to home - will be an extra 46,287 primary school places. A three stream school will have 24 classrooms multiplied effectively by 28 which gives the number. We are now building schools to accommodate 600 plus. At post-primary level the net increase will be 21,000 by 2015 to 2016. That is 21 community post-primary schools. The schools we are building now have a capacity for 1,000 and the inspectorate in the Department is clear that it does not like the teaching environment that a school with more than 1,200 pupils generates. It begins to be a problem to manage at that stage. In the United Kingdom there are post-primary schools with 3,000 pupils. In the south of England there is a bigger accommodation crisis. It is an enormous crisis.