James Breen (Clare, Independent)

Everybody accepts a right to education. Today's debate on the institutes of technology dealt with the latter end of this scale. This motion, which I fully endorse, deals with the even more important primary education. Throughout the country we have seen massive urban construction development, particularly in the past 20 years. This brings with it a duty to put proper infrastructure and community supports in place. However, school expansion and construction is one of many areas where the Government has failed.

In the past year I wrote to the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, on behalf of primary schools seeking various amounts of funding for expansion in Sixmilebridge, Ballyea, Querrin, Tuamgraney and Moveen. The reality is that due to a lack of long-term planning, these and other schools have student enrolment demands far in excess of departmental guidelines. Many have prefabricated buildings which are now totally unsuitable for teaching requirements and I am sure that if health and safety inspections were carried out, many such prefabricated classrooms would be closed.

St. Finnachta's national school in Sixmilebridge, County Clare, applied for funding to enable necessary development in December 2005, but to date it has not even received an acknowledgement of this application. Part of its proposed development is to replace two prefabs which have been in classroom use since 1976. Classrooms in the old part of that school are approximately half the size recommended by the school planning section of the Department of Education and Science. Yet this application did not even merit a written response to the school. Next September, this school expects to have an enrolment of 310 pupils, but it only has ten teachers and a principal. These deficiencies far outstrip the commitments given under An Agreed Programme for Government.

Ennis national school has fought for many years to acquire a suitable site so that a new larger school, capable of meeting the demands required of it, can be built. Eventually a site was secured and it was hoped that the development would go ahead in an area close to St. Flannan's College, in the heart of a residential part of Ennis. The ESB then sought permission to build a telecommunications mast close by but planning permission was refused and the appeals inspector from An Bord Pleanála also recommended that permission be refused. However, An Bord Pleanála granted permission, citing that to refuse would be in contravention of national school strategy on telecommunications. To allow construction of a mast so close to a primary school shows how much of a priority the health of our school children is under this Government.

The failure of the current administration to even come close to the teacher-pupil ratio commitment announced in 2002 in An Agreed Programme for Government is an indictment of the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin's appalling record in office. The failure of her Department to annually spend its full budget allocation——

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