Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the fact that we are examining new schools for the area. It would be madness for a local Deputy to object to that but this school thought it was top of the list in terms of new build. They have shared a premises since the school opened and the difficulty now is that one of the prefabs they were using is defunct and the children can no longer use it. It is a gaelscoil and it now must use classes in some of the other schools, which is creating difficulties. The correspondence and discussion between the school and the forward planning unit had ceased as far as they were concerned. They had not heard anything in regard to it. Why was the Department planning new schools while failing to improve existing schools? That is the difficulty the school faced and is probably one that can be mirrored in other areas. In terms of the optics, most schools cannot understand what is happening.

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