Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

The school in question has 230 newcomer children and only three additional teachers. The Minister spoke about a review. Did the schools she visited in London have classrooms? Did they have to subdivide their gyms? Did they have to do away with their libraries? Had they two prefabs which had been declared unfit for habitation by the health and safety authorities?

The Minister has described this issue as the new challenge facing us but she does not appear to be rising to that challenge. She is certainly slow to tackle it. Is the Minister aware of any other school in a similar situation with the same number or percentage of newcomer children? More than half the children are newcomer children. The Minister spoke about the importance of integration and so forth. What effect does this have on the school? In the past two or three weeks 17 children have enrolled in this school and all are newcomer children.

It is not enough for the Minister to announce new resources during the summer. The problem with this school is that there will not be room for the children. If there are new teachers, where will they go? There is no room in the school. I do not know if this problem is specific to the area in question but it needs to be resolved. The current situation is unacceptable to both the teachers and the children. There is a particular problem at this school. Millions have been spent on the school but that will just go down the drain if proper resources are not provided for the children.

Children in the school have all types of difficulties, aside from the background they are from. The resources are not being provided by the Department. Do any other schools have similar percentages of pupils? If the Minister believes that three new teachers, or one teacher per 110 pupils, is sufficient, she is living in cloud cuckoo land.

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