Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, on his new position. Owing to his family contacts, he is very familiar with the constituency of Laois-Offaly and perhaps Kolbe Special School, Portlaoise. I hope he will take a special interest in the school.

The reason I am raising the issue of this school, in particular, is that it is extraordinary. There are very few schools like it. When we talk about a special school, we all have ideas about what they entail. There are many special schools throughout the country. This particular school has 40 students under the age of 18 who have severe and profound intellectual disabilities. Each child has a severe learning difficulty. This makes the school an outlier by comparison with normal schools in terms of the difficulties the students encounter. People, even locals in County Laois, do not understand that each student has a profound intellectual disability and a severe learning difficulty and that all the children are non-verbal. Practically the majority are in wheelchairs and are completely wheelchair bound. All have to be brought to the school in special adapted minibuses suited to wheelchairs. The Minister is getting the picture. There are only 40 students.

The school has been pleading for a new school building for the past 15 years. I want the Minister to give approval to appoint a design team. That is precisely where we need to be. The school is on a building list. The construction might happen sometime but unless there is a design team, nothing will happen. This is the critical next step that needs to be taken. The site has been identified. It is in HSE ownership and is adjacent to the current school but we need the design team. The accommodation schedule was discussed among the departmental officials in Tullamore and the board of management some time ago, in March 2017. There has not been a dicky bird since. Therefore, we need to move on to the appointment of a design team so further progress can be made.

Let me put Portlaoise in context and talk about the other schools. There are 5,000 people in primary and secondary schools in Portlaoise. In Kolbe school, there are 40, which is fewer than 1% of the total. The students in question are the most disadvantaged in the entire region. Kolbe school is the only school in the town that has not had a new school building in the past ten or 15 years. Every other school in the town has benefited. By comparison with any other town, Portlaoise has the most modern suite of primary and secondary schools. Despite this, the Department is neglecting the children who are most vulnerable and most in need. Therefore, we need a design team to be appointed.

I visited the school last week. I met the chairman of the board of management and the principal. I met every staff member and every child. No child could speak to me. None was able to utter a word. Many of them had severe difficulties. Some of them had to sleep. Owing to their profound difficulties, they are not even capable of sitting up in a wheelchair for the few hours they spend in the school building every day. These are very special cases. I cannot understand how their parents cope with the difficulties they face when they take the children home. Of course, it is a life-changing experience for all the families. Since the children are coming from a wide catchment area and are not just from the town, the parents can never meet for a parents' meeting. They cannot leave their children at home with somebody else to mind them for two or three hours. They can hardly ever get together because they are all isolated by their own work. They have not had the parent power one would have in other schools. I ask the Minister to appoint a design team for Kolbe school in Portlaoise.

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