Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending. I was contacted by the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Joe McHugh, this afternoon to say he could not be here due to a political engagement to which he committed some time ago. He asked if I wanted to leave the matter until Tuesday and said he would come in and reply at that point. However, I felt time was of the essence and decided to go ahead tonight. I appreciate the fact that the Minister got back to me, however.

Today is 29 November.

It is a significant day and that is why I wanted to address this issue in the Dáil. We have had an ongoing situation with the lack of secondary school places for young people in Newbridge. This has been going on over the last four to five years. There are many different Topical Issue matters that Deputies could raise but it is a shocking indictment on the education situation in Kildare that the last number of such matters that I have submitted have all been on education. They have been on autism spectrum disorder, ASD, places, the delays in St. Paul's in Monasterevin and this issue of absolutely needing to have a second level school in the Newbridge-Kildare area.

The reason 29 November is a significant date is that five months ago, the then Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, said that an announcement would be imminent on the possibility of the provision of a new secondary school in the Newbridge-Kildare area. There was some talk, which was welcomed, about the possibility of amalgamating the education and training board, ETB, school on the Curragh site and a new second level school, more than likely from Educate Together given that we have two Educate Together primary schools, one in Kildare and one in Newbridge, which are very well subscribed.

When I pressed the then Minister, Deputy Bruton, a few months later, he said that a decision would be made by the end of October. At the end of October I visited the Department of Education and Skills unit in Tullamore, together with the Minister, Deputy McHugh, and I was told by the officials that because of the issues around the buildings it would be pushed out for a month but a decision would definitely be made before the end of November and possibly in mid-November.

In fairness, I understood that there were issues with 42 schools around the country which placed a lot of demands on them, but here we are with one day left in the month of November and we are hanging on for a decision. Parents have been contacting my office all this week because they have not got places for their children in the three schools in Newbridge for September next. I have contacted the three schools and every one of them has a long waiting list for next September. This is simply not good enough.

As a country, we revere education and we put much investment into it and we say that we want all of our students to have an equal opportunity to learn, to develop themselves and to prepare themselves for life and for work. How can we do so when we have a situation where children are being turned away from schools? I am absolutely not blaming the schools. We have excellent schools in Newbridge but they simply do not have the capacity. When we look at the available figures, Kildare is one of the areas with the fastest population growth in the country and between 2011 and 2016, the number of children between the ages of 13 and 18 grew at a rate of 205% of the State's growth rate. That certainly has to indicate the absolute need for a new second level school.

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