Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

While I note the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, is delivering legislation in the Seanad, I am disappointed that he is not here to hear this debate.

I have been advised by the Minister in reply to a previous parliamentary question that the country is divided into 314 school planning areas. Skerries is one of those planning areas but I am afraid there is no evidence of any planning going on. Skerries community college is the only second level school in the area under the patronage of the education and training board, ETB. The Government plan for new schools from 2019 to 2022 does not include a new second level school for Skerries.

The community college is taking in 180 students in September 2020. There were 257 applicants. As of Monday, there were 68 children on a waiting list which may reduce somewhat with some parents sitting on two offers. However, there is no alternative school in this designated planning area. Some families in Skerries decide to send their female children to the all-girls Loreto secondary school in Balbriggan but the 68 children on the waiting list are from the catchment area and have attended one of the six designated feeder schools in the enrolment policy. The school has three criteria for enrolment, namely, catchment area, feeder school and sibling. Children who are the first born in a family are the ones mostly affected in the points race for priority and they have to go into a lottery for priority on a waiting list. There are many such families in Skerries today. They are not in the catchment area or feeder schools for any neighbouring school planning area. What are they to do? Where are they to go? The school currently has 975 students. It was built as a 900-pupil school.

I met the school principal this week to get the facts. I spoke to Paddy Lavelle, who is the chief executive officer of the patron ETB, to highlight the crisis. Skerries is a growing town where building continued at a low level right through the crash and has accelerated in the last couple of years. The Department has dropped the ball when it comes to planning for post-primary education in Skerries. It must pick up the ball and accelerate with it. There is no excuse for not doing so, given that this problem was highlighted last year.

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