Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Louise O'Reilly for raising this issue again and I understand the concern. There are 11 schools in the Swords area which enrol junior infants and they run across the spectrum from Catholic schools, one Gaelscoil, Educate Together and a Church of Ireland school. The basic problem here is that the Holy Family junior national school is maxed out and cannot take in additional junior infants at this point. It is already full and its senior school, which would also have to take any increased enrolment, is on a very constrained site. As such, expanding capacity at the Holy Family junior national school is not an option.

There are 760 children who are due to be taken into junior infants across the 11 schools in Swords. I am told that two schools currently have junior infant places available. St. Cronin's, which has the largest number of available places, is a mixed school, not an all-boys school. The schools have also expressed a willingness to offer further junior infant places for September 2017 if necessary. As such, there is capacity available to meet the need. The Department is very much aware of the position in the Holy Family school, which has 26 mainstream teachers and an enrolment of 680 pupils. We have been liaising across the various schools to check their waiting lists. As the Deputy knows, there is multiple enrolment on waiting lists, which makes it difficult to identify exactly what is the need.

The underlying difficulty outlined by Deputy O'Reilly is that parents want their children to go to the nearest school and I can understand entirely why this is the case, but the Department has to operate on the basis not just of the local school but groups of schools. We have to plan across planning areas and in this case we are doing so.

The Department remains of the belief there is sufficient capacity there, but has recognised schools that could expand to meet that need in September should that be necessary. That is the current position. I fully recognise this is a very rapidly growing area and there is no doubt that based on demographics we will be looking at the need for additional schools in Swords and in fairly short order. I am sure that is the case. For this coming September, the Department remains of the view that between the existing schools, which either have existing capacity to provide or can do so without constraining a site, which is the difficulty in Holy Family junior national school, they can take on extra junior infant children on a sustainable basis and are able to see them right through the school. There are schools available to do that. I can understand the difficulty when a parent wants a child to go to a particular school, or a child has a sibling in a particular school. That is the position as of now and the Department is very closely monitoring the situation. Expanding the capacity in Holy Family junior national school is just not an option available of to us, as I am informed.

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