Shane McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

No application for planning permission was submitted. The children are being accommodated in a school for which €60,000 per month is being paid in rent, but the 90 children there do not have an adequate play area and another 150 children will be enrolled next September. Then we wonder why there are problems such as bullying and drugs in our schools.

The most important issue is young people's education. Those people should not have been brought to a meeting in Buswells at 12 o'clock on 29 March and given that information. People in this country are the easiest in the world to get on with if they know what is happening. What happened on that occasion is the reason people do not have respect for politicians. Why were people given that information on 29 March when it was known that was not the case? As an ordinary person and a politician, I find it unacceptable that a member of Government should do that. If that is the Government's only way of getting on, we deserve what we get. Every child in the country has been misled. We have continued to facilitate building but we have provided nothing for the children and now we cannot control the situation. I have learned that one does not believe what one hears in here.

Why were the people of Laytown and Bettystown and the teachers brought a meeting in Buswells Hotel on 29 March and told that an application for planning permission was being submitted when the Department did not even own the site and the plans for the school were not even drawn up? If that is how much power means to those in Government, they are welcome to it.

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