Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I am endeavouring to find out when a decision will be made to relocate St. Brigid's boys national school, Foxrock, to a new site due to the growing demand for school places and the inability to accommodate 24 classrooms on the current site.

St. Brigid's school is geographically located in the Foxrock area but assigned to Cabinteely parish for administrative purposes. Its sister school which caters for girls, often from the same families, is located in the park in Cabinteely. St. Brigid's was built in 1914 to cater for boys and girls but due to overcrowding, the girls moved to their new school in 1988. The boys were to follow soon afterwards. The school has 460 pupils and 24 teachers accommodated in six permanent and ten temporary prefabricated mainstream classrooms. All other facilities are prefabricated.

On the instructions of the Department of Education and Science, the OPW advertised in August 2006 for the acquisition of a three acre greenfield site within a 2 km radius of the existing school. To date, the search has been unsuccessful, which is not surprising in view of the high price of land in the area.

An opportunity exists in the form of a major park located opposite the girls school in Cabinteely. While it may be sacrilegious to suggest that a portion of the park, which must comprise 100 acres, should be turned to other uses, a five acre section which lies opposite the current school contains parking facilities. Unfortunately, the Minister for Education and Science is not here even though the school is in her constituency. I would like her to ask Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to provide some of the five acres for a 24-classroom school. The current site of the school is extremely valuable and would fetch a considerable amount of money on the open market. In relocating the boys school, a major indoor centre could be build adjacent to the school on the open space and could be of use to both schools and the local community. That centre could be funded from the proceeds of the sale of the existing school site.

I put down parliamentary questions to the Minister on this issue, the latest being on 12 February, in an effort to get information on the current position of the project. The growing population of the nearby Cherrywood and Glenamuck areas makes significant demands on the schools. There is no point in relocating the boys school further away from the girls school because parents are by and large ferrying their children to both schools.

I raised this matter on the Adjournment because the Department's reply to my simple parliamentary question stated: "I wish to advise the Deputy that the Department are in ongoing contact with the relevant authorities regarding the issue in question." It is an absolute disgrace to give that sort of reply to any Deputy. I do not even know who the "relevant authorities" might be. The management of the school is not the relevant authority because it does not know anything. We spoke this morning about Dáil reform. Unless we get decent answers to parliamentary questions, we are going nowhere. I appreciate that the Minister of State, Deputy Smith, is doing his job but it is outrageous that the Minister does not see fit to give her constituency colleague a proper parliamentary reply on a major problem in her constituency. To add insult to injury, she did not even turn up for the Adjournment debate.

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