Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister knows, the board, students, parents and teachers of Clonkeen College were shocked and dismayed to discover last May that the Christian Brothers intended to sell their school playing pitches to property developers, despite previous promises from the Christian Brothers that the fields would be given to school in perpetuity as long as it continued to exist. Some €450,000 has been spent on draining the pitches and €260,000 was spent on fencing, including €120,000 of which was public money.

They are now even more shocked to discover that in response to their campaign, which involved appealing to the Minister and Christian Brothers not to do this to the school and steal their facilities from them the Edmund Rice Schools Trust, ERST, has now, in an act of purely vindictive retaliation against the campaigning of the school, threatened to dissolve the voluntary board of Clonkeen College. It is an absolutely extraordinary act of bullying by ERST against the school. The voluntary board is doing nothing more than trying to protect the interests of the school and its students. It is ERST which, incredibly, has claimed that the board is acting against the interests of the school when it is ERST which is acting against the interest of the school by threatening to take away the playing pitches and dissolve the school board.

As the Minister knows, the request to dissolve the board has to be approved by him. To put it bluntly, this is a moment of truth for the Government in terms of deciding which side it is on. I and the Minister know that the school is asking him to back the board and school and dismiss out-of-hand the outrageous suggestion that the board be dissolved by ERST. As the Minister knows, the members of the board have been forced to take very costly legal action to try to protect the pitches. The case will be heard in the High Court in March. They ask that not only the Minister reject the proposal to dissolve the board but that he back the board in its legal action against the congregation to protect the pitches for the school's students.

Not only is this important for the 500 students of the school and future generations of students, it will also affect students in the moderate to general learning disability facility. It was built recently and will be directly and very negatively impacted by the development proposal and plan to sell the pitches. St. John of God services in the area said that it was dismayed to hear about the planned sale of the sports fields and the negative impact this would surely have on students with disabilities. It went on to say that the change would have a dramatic negative impact on their environment as noise and other distractions would wreak havoc with their learning and greatly impede the teachers' ability to connect and teach. It implored the Minister to support the school and board. I ask that the Minister do that, and indicate that he will not agree to dissolve the board and instead support the school.

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