Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for choosing this item for debate. It is very important to families living in Limerick city. Limerick city is unique in that it has a central application system for entry to post-primary schools. It does not apply in other parts of the country. One of the nine schools that is to be announced in the near future is in the south western side of Limerick and is due to open in 2017. Therefore, it needs to be on the list of schools to which parents can apply for their children to attend from September 2017. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, will know I have been raising the issue by way of parliamentary questions, and I have a written answer to a question from 5 October which causes me concern.

I am a former Minister for Education of Skills and the timetable, as I understood it when I left office, was that the patronage of the new schools was to be announced in the second week of September. The Department was well aware of the urgency of the issue, particularly regarding the Limerick school, given that the central application system does not apply in other parts of the country. This is the third week of October and we still do not have an announcement of the patronage of the schools. The written answer I received was as follows:

Applications received are currently being assessed by my Department... The final assessment reports will be forwarded for the consideration of the new schools establishment group, NSEG, which will submit a report with recommendations to me for consideration and final decision.

I am concerned about this given that I would have thought that at this stage the recommendations would have gone from the NSEG to the Minister for a decision. Schools in Limerick are holding their open days. Parents are attending these open days and will very soon have to fill in a school application form in which they will rank their preferences from one to nine, usually. This is a very important decision for parents. On the south side of the city, there is one large school which is always oversubscribed. Therefore, parents will have to decide whether they will put the school down as their first choice, knowing they may not get it. If they do not get this school, they may end up with the choice at the very bottom of their list, given that most of the schools they may have put down as their second or subsequent choices will already be filled by parents who have made those schools their first choice.

People in the House who do not live in Limerick do not deal with the system. It is a very specific system that applies in Limerick, and this is why it is so urgent we know the patronage of the school very quickly. If the Minister is not ready to announce the patronage of all nine schools, I urge him to at least announce this one, given that it is the most urgent. The other school that will open in Limerick is to be on the eastern side of the city. Given that it will not open until 2018, there is no particular urgency about it, although parents would like to know who the patron will be, as do parents in the other seven parts of the country where new schools are to be opened in 2017 or 2018. Obviously, the schools are needed, and would not be coming on stream if the demographic pressures did not exist in those parts of the country. From my knowledge of Limerick, I know there is real stress on parents who are worried their children will not get a place anywhere near where they live. In this part of Limerick, parents are sending their children out into the country on buses or across to the other side of the city, given that the one school in the area is so oversubscribed. The same is true of the other side of the city, which is due to get a new school in 2018. I urge the Minister to make a decision on the patronage of the school now.

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