Shane McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this matter. The Minister is probably sick of hearing of Laytown at this stage, but I have no option but to try to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion. It is ten years since it was accepted that a new school was needed in Laytown. I was not a councillor prior to being elected to this House and my introduction to politics was a promise by the Taoiseach, Deputy Mary Wallace and the then election candidate of the announcement of a new school for Laytown three years ago.

August 2006 was a defining moment when I, as a public representative, the Minister of State, Deputy Wallace and other public representatives in the area were called to a meeting at which it was pointed out that many children did not have the facility of a school to attend. The Department's answer to that issue and the way forward pointed out by the then Minister of State, Deputy Wallace, was that four year olds in the area should be brought to a school, put on a school bus and brought to a weigh room for jockeys in Bellewstown and that this facility would do rightly. That is where this process started. The parents of the children said "No" to that proposal at that meeting. They said there was no way they would send their children aged four on a school bus to be transported eight to ten miles on what is one of the worst roads in County Meath to that facility.

People were asked to put their political affiliations to one side. I and Thomas Byrne, then an election candidate — I do not know if he was announced as a candidate at that time — took on the issue of dealing with the objections in regard to the school. Nobody else came forward to do it. I knew it was a political minefield for me but I had a right to do it on behalf of the people. We were asked to do it, but we got only so far.

To cut a long story short, when everybody concerned had gone their separate ways, fourth and fifth class pupils were being accommodated in a gym in the other school in the area and the children starting school did not have the facility of a school to attend. Some people were brought to a meeting held in Buswells Hotel on 29 March. The meeting was attended by some of the parents, a teacher in the school, an election candidate, a local councillor, the Minister and a Department official. The Minister told those people that an application for planning permission for a new school would be submitted in May. She said that the contracts would be issued and gave a commitment that at the end of September next year a new school would be opened. I did not know anything about that at the time, but I was happy about that development. I knew that pursuing this issue was of no political benefit to me, but that did not matter because I believed it was a job worth doing. People worked together to pursue it. However, as of today no further progress has been made.

We have heard of announcement following announcement in recent weeks only to discover that planning permission for the new school has not even been submitted. We are not sure if the site has even been acquired. What annoys me more than anything else is that those people were invited to a meeting in Dublin and told that the application for planning permission would be submitted at the end of May, but that represented a deceit. The people were misled on that occasion. I am not allowed nor do I like to use the word that describes what happened in the Chamber. It was unacceptable to me as a politician for the Minister to tell those people that a planning permission application would be submitted for the school and that a new school would be opened at the end of September .

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