Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I do not seek to criticise this Minister but every time a Minister addresses the House, he or she informs us that more money is being spent than at any time in the past, as if this was a major achievement. I cannot envisage circumstances in which a Minister could expect to get away with spending less than in the past. After all, house prices have increased tenfold in the past decade. My response on hearing that more money is being spent than at any time in our history is to declare: "so what".

County Kildare is a microcosm of the national position in terms of the school building programme. It may not have been the Minister's fault but someone is to blame for the current problems in my county because population changes were clearly projected a decade ago when the census figures and county development plan were made available to the Department. To take the Naas-Kildare-Sallins triangle as an example, we have been scurrying around for 12 months in search of a site for a school for Kill when it was well known ten years ago that the area would be a building site a few years hence. Despite the obvious health and safety problems, we managed to get a site at the last minute but much work remains to be done. It is even more serious that despite the Department being aware that the population of the area would increase, we have had a prolonged fight in every case. With most schools overflowing, we also have a daft case where a school will not reach a full complement of students because of the various criteria that apply. The Minister must take steps to address this.

Another school in County Kildare has too few teachers because the number of teachers available to schools is calculated on the basis of enrolment in the September of the previous year. The influx of population in the locality resulted in such a large increase in pupils that the only way to provide supervision was to close one room and bundle pupils into another room.

See this speech in context