Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I have raised this issue a number of times on the Adjournment and tabled various questions to the Minister for Education and Science. Gaelscoil Bharra, a scoil lán-Ghaelach, was founded in 1996 but has still not reached the planning process for a school building, even though the school has shown its viability from the beginning, with more pupils than it can cater for. All along the line, however, it has fallen foul of negligence, lack of communication and broken promises.

The school is located in an antiquated prefabricated building. After 13 years, the Minister of State can guess what conditions are like on a day like this. The building leaks when it is raining and it is too hot and stuffy when the sun shines. The toilets are such that most of the pupils can no longer go to them because they cannot stomach using them without getting sick. The building is in a deplorable state. As far back as February 2000, the then inspector from the Department of Education and Science wrote that the deplorable state of the temporary accommodation made it imperative that the planning process be initiated as soon as possible. That was nine years ago and since then the prefabricated building has deteriorated to a terrible extent. This is no way to treat the children of the nation, their parents or the staff, who must also put up with those conditions on a daily basis. Certainly, the INTO is not too happy with the situation.

It was not until the school was granted a freedom of information request that it discovered the school planning section had admitted the request for acquisition of a site had fallen "through the cracks" and had not been forwarded to the OPW for more than four years. All that critical time was lost when the school could have been built.

It was not until late last year that the Department of Education and Science finally, after much huffing and puffing, and pressure from myself and others, put together the process of acquiring the existing temporary site from the local GAA club, Naomh Fionnbarra. It seeks to acquire a long-term lease from Dublin City Council, which owns the site, but we do not know the terms or length of the lease or if agreement has been reached between the Department and the local authority. When the lease is signed, we must go through the planning process, which could take another year at least.

I am calling for the Minister for Education and Science to include the Gaelscoil project immediately in his multi-annual school building and modernisation programme and, in view of the four year delay due to the Department's negligence during which the building could have been built, for the new permanent school for which Gaelscoil Bharra has waited 13 years to be fast-tracked and completed as quickly as possible.

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