Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for permitting debate on this important issue and the Minister of State for coming here to reply to it. The issue relates to the need for the Minister for Education and Science to announce immediate funding so that the go-ahead may be given to the extension at St. Mary's national school in Virginia.

The town of Virginia has dramatically increased in size over the past few years. Many of its new inhabitants have bought houses there and work in Dublin. It is bad enough for them that the M3 has not been built, but the fact that their children, and the children of families who have lived in Virginia all their lives, have no acceptable school accommodation is deplorable.

The existing school was built for approximately 190 pupils and there are 315 pupils on the roll today. There are seven teachers working in prefabs where they teach approximately 150 pupils. There is no longer a computer room or library. There is no storage for all the resources needed to fully implement what the principal accepts is a wonderful new child-friendly curriculum. The principal has no office and has to use part of an old building, while 17 female teachers are using a single toilet. The rental of prefabs for the past two years was €90,000 and at best will cost a minimum of €360,000 before a new school can be finalised.

If ever there was an example of failed consultation between the housing section in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and our education system, this is it. Surely we must not just plan for houses, but at the same time for services such as schools. It is totally unacceptable that no senior Department official has stood on the site since the application for an extension consisting of four classrooms and three ancillary rooms was made in April 2004. While I appreciate that I received a commitment from senior Department officials on Monday that every effort is being made to assess projected needs to bring us up to 2011, it is difficult to explain to parents, teachers and management why the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, has not assured more progress on such a critical issue.

The management team met the Minister in June 2005 and it is still awaiting progress. I ask the Minister of State to make sure that the assessments are finished before the end of the year so that it is included in the new year programme as an urgent and emergency need. I hope that by the end of January the Minister for Education and Science will be in a position to allow her Department to bring this to the planning stage.

I compliment the parents' association, management, principal, teachers and all the staff for the delivery of an excellent service in an extremely difficult situation. It creates difficulties for teachers and pupils, both in class and at play, but it is clearly even more difficult for children needing resource-remedial or other support teaching. It is difficult to teach normal-sized classes in such accommodation but it is impossible when five of the classes have over 30 pupils and three have over 35.

This school has a waiting list for some of its classes. Some 49% of the pupils from first to sixth class have joined after junior infants, highlighting the influx of new people to the area. Of course, they came as a result of the increased housing, which itself came as a result of planning. Situations such as this should be dealt with in advance and planning taken into account by our education system.

The people of Virginia have the proud record of providing their own secondary school in very difficult times, when the State had no money. It is unacceptable that, with the State coffers bulging to the extent the Tánaiste says there is no need for all the taxes, teachers and children should have to survive in such structures. It is difficult to explain to the farming community and small shop owners how health and safety considerations can be ignored by the Department of Education and Science when they are subject to such on-the-spot inspections under the guise of so-called EU regulations.

The Minister of State's colleague, Deputy Brendan Smith, was at the meeting last night, as was Deputy Connolly. We saw at first hand the seriousness of the situation. The school does not even have computers, which is not the way young children should be taught in this day and age. I urge him to bring a message to the Minister that this is an urgent crisis.

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