Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)

I am delighted to see my two Government colleagues from County Clare are present to support me in the Chamber tonight. Such is their enthusiasm that I know they will give strong support to the project and facilitate a meeting between the Minister and a group from Quin so that we can get the extension to the school.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for facilitating me in raising this matter in the House tonight. Quin national school is in urgent need of an extension to cater for the increased number of pupils, in particular, in the interest of the children's education and for health and safety reasons. The school was originally built in 1960 and has had no extension to its facilities since 1980 when an extra classroom, general purpose room and a staff room were built. In the meantime, the population of Quin has soared. There was a 32.3% increase in population between the 2002 and 2006 census.

In 2001, the application for major capital works was commenced under the former principal, Tomás Ó Síocháin. In October 2005, an application was lodged with the Department of Education and Science. In 2006, a technical visit was granted and the Department acknowledged that it would review the accommodation for a principal and 12 teachers. Since then the entire process has come to a standstill. When I raised the matter in the House with the Minister on the 19 June 2008 he said that a technical visit had not taken place but indicated that he would arrange a visit in the near future when resources allowed and when the project was ready to progress through the programme. When the technical visit failed to take place, I raised the issue with the Minister again on 8 October 2008. At that time the Minister changed his mind and could not give a timeframe for the further progression of the project.

Last Monday, I visited the school and saw the conditions for myself in which the principal, Ms Anne Fitzpatrick, and her colleagues have to teach children every day. They do an excellent job under trying conditions. There are 224 pupils in the school and they currently have only four mainstream classrooms for nine mainstream teachers. They have no rooms for three special education teachers, which means that two of the teachers work in prefabs and one teacher has to use the staff room. The situation is intolerable. The office of the school principal is a cloakroom.

I saw the classrooms in the main building where 29 to 30 children were cramped into tiny rooms. As far as I am concerned, overcrowding is a health and safety issue and it cannot be allowed to continue. The general purpose and storage facilities are almost non-existent at the school. The school operates with seven prefabs and the pupils and their teachers get drenched on a regular basis moving from one building to another. They have applied for another prefab. However, currently there is no place to put it and the only option appears to be to send 15 staff members to a tiny cloakroom to make room for it when it is provided.

More than €500,000 has been spent by the Minister on temporary accommodation to date. How much more will be spent given the likelihood of other prefabs being required up to 2013? That money would go a long way towards covering the cost of the extension at the school and would provide much needed work for the construction industry. The other problem facing the school is that by 2013 it might have to turn children away. Even accounting for a slowdown in the construction sector, it is estimated that the school will have to cater for 310 children by 2013.

Another big problem for the school is that most of its minor works grant is swallowed up by the constant need to maintain an old building. That building is damp, outdated and has electrical and sewerage problems. In 2009, it received a minor works grant of €8,793.00 and to date it has spent €18,517.00 on remedial works. Quin has a vibrant community sector and the local school has an active and hard working board of management. It has raised approximately €220,000 from the local community to purchase and develop a field to provide additional recreational facilities and to assist with the extension of the school.

Staff, pupils and parents are totally disillusioned and fed up waiting for this extension to be given the green light. I hope the Minister will shed some light on the issue tonight, given the presence of my two colleagues. While teachers are made to teach in intolerable conditions in schools such as the one in Quin, €386 million remains unspent by the Department in the schools building capital allocation programme. There is no excuse, therefore, why the project cannot be progressed.

I appeal to my colleagues, to the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, and to the Minister for Education and Science, to meet with the teachers and the board of management. They should listen to their valid case and give the children and people of Quin the extension they deserve and not leave them in the poor conditions that they have had to put up with in recent years. This is a very important project.

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