Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I call on the Minister for Education and Science to immediately convene a forum of parents, patrons, principals and other stakeholders in education in Dublin 15 to create a fair and just school enrolment system. This is the time of year when schools throughout Dublin 15 enrol children. Once again, confusion reigns among parents in the Diswellstown, Littlepace, Clonsilla, Tyrelstown and other developing areas of Blanchardstown and Castleknock as to whether their children will get one of the few coveted places in their local primary school next September.

Every day for the past seven or eight years has been groundhog day, with the recurring school place crisis in Dublin 15. Last year, in the run up to the general election, the Minister for Education and Science made a lot of promises about resolving the matter. The then Minister of State with responsibility for children, who is now Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, had his Department fund a ground-breaking report on education and the demand for school places in the Dublin 15 area.

That report was launched to great fanfare by the Minister and proposed, in its 13 principal recommendations, a round-table forum of all the stakeholders and a Green Paper from the Government to deal with the issue of planning for enrolment in areas such as Dublin 15, where there is an explosion in the school-going population and particularly in the new Irish community.

This week the Minister for Education and Science announced her intention to apply for planning permission for three new primary schools in Ongar, the Phoenix Park racecourse and at Kellystown near Clonsilla. There was no consultation. It is not clear how children will be enrolled for these schools. It may be that — as in the case of Scoil Colm, established at the last minute last year under the patronage of the Archbishop of Dublin — these schools will be primarily for children who have failed to get into the existing schools in the area. Therefore, as in the case of Scoil Colm and the Educate Together school in Balbriggan, they may end up being the schools for those children left out. Do we really want to develop ghettoised schools where almost all children are from a non-Irish background?

No matter how fantastic the work of the parents and teachers in schools such as Scoil Colm and Balbriggan Educate Together, which I admire greatly, it is not a desirable development in the long run to have segregated schools. In true Department of Education and Science fashion, the Minister and her officials seem determined to repeat the mistakes of earlier years and of other educational situations like the debate on autism and plunge blindly ahead regardless of the best interests of children and parents. It is time to consult and develop a fair and coherent system of school enrolment that facilitates children attending their local schools. I have proposed a national convention on education to address the delicate question of ethos and religion in respect of education. The primary problem remains the lack of coherent planning for places and the timely building of schools.

The Minister for Education and Science has announced three new schools but cannot tell us who will attend these schools or the enrolment procedure. We are piling mistake on mistake. The Minister must receive an all-party delegation, as her predecessors used to do, on education in Dublin 15. She is in hiding and while she may have money for the situation she is not considering the best interests of development of the whole community, including members of the traditional Irish community who have purchased houses, who work, pay PAYE and expect a primary school for their children. It is not good that a child from a new community may never go to school with an Irish child through all of the primary cycle and possibly the secondary cycle. This could be resolved if the Minister is prepared to address the issue.

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