Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this matter. I welcome that the Minister of State spoke about devolved grants which are extremely important for many of the smaller schools.

Monaghan Model school is one of a small number of model schools throughout the country which was in place at the foundation of the State. The school is a listed building and is therefore of great importance architecturally in Monaghan town. However, the most important fact is that the last major improvements and repairs were carried out to this school in 1984. Since then some smaller Protestant schools were closed and amalgamated with the Model school so pupil numbers increased. In 1990 an application was made for the provision of a general purpose room. In 1992 architects from the Department of Education visited and assessed the existing structure and made proposals to the Department which was to appoint specialist architects to make further assessments. This assessment team was not appointed until the summer of 2001 when it met the then chairperson and principal of the school. The architects again visited the school in November 2001 and by December 2002 the building project was agreed and was placed at architectural stage, which is stage 2. It was May 2008 before stage 3 plans were approved and as yet in spite of numerous requests no more commitments have been made by the Department or the Minister.

There are 136 pupils of ten different nationalities on the roll. There are five mainstream teachers plus a learning support teacher, a language support teacher and a resource teacher. There are five mainstream classrooms and the Minister of State would need to see these to understand how limited the space is. The other room is divided to create learning support and language support. The room - corridor really - linking the office to the main school is divided to create a resource teaching area. There is one staff room which serves as a general office, teacher resource library, store room for art materials, PE room for junior classes on a wet day and meeting room for the parents association and board of management. The office is shared by a secretary and principal, and is used for medical visits and for meeting individual parents and so on. There is no kitchen as there is nowhere to fit one and the corridors are used for storage.

This is totally unacceptable. The project is ready to go and all the board of management needs is the funding to take the project forward. The school enrolment is still increasing but the principal must now refuse to take extra names because resources are really getting to breaking point. Physical space is simply not available and there are serious health and safety issues. In the current financial situation, I understand how difficult it is to commit money to projects. However, as this is a listed building there will be a great deal of employment involved to do the job properly and I humbly suggest it would be better value for money to pay people to restructure this school for the future education of our young people than to pay people for doing nothing on social welfare. This would give much-needed employment to a very depressed industry and the Department of Education and Science should be able to get much better value for money now than if this project had been started three years ago.

This school in spite of the limitations of the building structure has an exceptionally high record in the delivery of high-quality education and there is always demand for places in it as can be illustrated by the fact that it caters for ten different nationalities. This in turn creates special needs in the context of language support and so on.

The chairperson, board and principal of this school are extremely frustrated to see and hear of so many other schools being dealt with and it is hard to explain to them why their project has not been dealt with. The school can hardly be accused of jumping the queue when its last works were completed in the 1984 and this application was made in 1990. Whenever the work is carried out, pupils and teachers will have to move the school, in every sense of the word, to alternative accommodation. It was the board's understanding that it was to receive the funds two years ago and to that end it made an agreement with Monaghan Harps GAA club to provide a site to accommodate alternative structures. This opportunity may not be there for ever and other accommodation may be difficult to find. This is a health and safety issue. There is extreme disappointment with the chairperson, board and principal of the school that their project has been left out and I urge the Minister to deal with this situation immediately.

The board received a holding letter which effectively asked it to do nothing further about the project otherwise funds would not be found for it. I could say much more if I had time. It is an urgent issue. I appreciate the Minister of State is not directly in charge of this area. However, I know her influence with the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, and I hope she will use that.

See this speech in context