Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last September, myself, Deputy Curran and a number of other Deputies raised the issue of the urgent need for a new school building for Scoil Mochua in Clondalkin, a special needs school for children with multiple and severe disabilities. One of the significant things about that Topical Issue was we were not coming as a group of constituency Members lobbying for our own constituency.

This school serves a very wide catchment area, not just central and west Dublin but also the counties of Meath, Kildare and elsewhere. The school has 74 pupils. Having been to the school on a number of occasions with Deputy Curran and others on a cross-party basis, the children and the parents in the schools are truly remarkable. The children are not remarkable because of their disabilities but because of the way in which they are able to overcome the enormous obstacles put in their way by our society and by the education system.

The building is simply unsuitable for any basic educational needs. It is not just that it is overcrowded or that some of these children are in prefabs. In one part of the school, it is not possible to close the toilet door. The toilet facility opens onto a corridor which has an old fashioned screen. The child, and possibly the assistant to the child, has to use this facility while other children, teachers, sometimes parents and Deputies, as was the case when we visited, walk down the corridor.

We asked the Minister to prioritise the capital investment to allow this school building to go ahead. He replied that information was being waited on from the school. That information has now been provided. We are looking for two things from the Minister. The first is an update. The answer to the parliamentary question the Minister gave last week was pretty poor in terms of additional information. We are looking for an update on what is happening with this vital capital project. However, we are also looking for the Minister to commit to prioritising this project so that this happens within the next number of years and not over the coming six-year period, as he indicated in his answer last week.

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