Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I welcome Deputies Brian Hayes and Quinn as spokespersons for their respective parties and thank them for facilitating the change to today's business.

In recent years unprecedented levels of investment have been provided both to improve existing school facilities and provide extra school places where needed. Improved forward planning has also been put in place through greater co-operation between the Department of Education and Science and local authorities and the publication of ten-year area development plans by the Department. This combination of investment and planning has allowed extensions to be built to schools all over Ireland, while many new schools have also been built in order to meet the needs of developing areas. Construction work this year alone will deliver over 700 classrooms to provide permanent accommodation for over 17,500 pupils, mainly in developing areas.

With regard to the specific issue of school places in Balbriggan, as raised by Deputy Hayes, the situation is as follows. Conscious of the fact that Balbriggan is a developing area, the Department has facilitated a significant expansion in the number of school places in the area in recent years. Established schools have been given extra teachers and accommodation, while new schools also opened in 2005 and 2006. Educate Together had also indicated its intention to open a new school in Balbriggan in 2008. At the same time the Department has been working with Fingal County Council to acquire land for new school buildings.

Given the population expansion that has been taking place in Balbriggan, departmental officials kept the enrolments situation under review over the summer in consultation with the existing schools. As soon as it became clear applications for the schools had grown to such an extent that a new school would be needed this year, my Department acted swiftly to secure accommodation for up to 120 children in a new school in Sunshine House. Educate Together agreed to be the patron of the school. I express my thanks to it for working with us to open the school within such a tight timeframe. I also convey my thanks to the principal of the school, whom I know had a difficult first few weeks with all the media focus on the school. I know she is deeply committed to ensuring her pupils receive a top quality education.

It was never and is not the Department's intention to establish schools solely for children of a particular ethnic background. However, in a situation where these children needed places, the new school was the only option.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

The current ethnic make-up of Bracken Educate Together national school is reflective of the nature of the families that had moved to the area recently. It is not the result of any unwillingness on the part of the existing schools to accept children of any particular ethnicity or religion. In fact, some of the existing schools have quite large numbers of newcomer children enrolled. I know many people in Balbriggan were very upset by the implications in some sectors of the media that there was any form of racism at play in this regard.

The Department intends to work with all schools in the area to help achieve a better spread of children of all nationalities across the different schools in future years. Common enrolment policies may be one way of achieving this. I accept that providing sufficient pupil places in all rapidly developing areas, including those with large immigrant communities, is absolutely vital to ensuring enrolment policies do not lead to immigrants being unable to secure places. Under the national development plan, €4.5 billion is being invested to improve existing school buildings and provide extra accommodation for an expected growth of 100,000 in the school-going population in the coming years. Together with the improvements in planning already put in place and those provided for in the new programme for Government, this will enable my Department to meet the needs of developing areas into the future.

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