Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In the programme for Government of 2016 many promises were made in the area of education. The Government said it was committed to delivering a school capital investment programme for extensions and refurbishment to cater for additional school places. It also stated significant funding has been secured as part of the capital plan. To the people of Bandon and its surrounds these promises were false and misleading.

On 22 February 2018, in answer to my question, the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, who was standing in for the Taoiseach, stated he was pleased to be able to respond positively to my request and that the Department of Education and Skills approved permanent accommodation for St. Brogan's college in Bandon comprising four mainstream classrooms and two resource teaching rooms. He stated it had been given the green light with funding from the Department of Education and Skills and the Government. He said he was very pleased this was the case. It is now two years on and not a shovel has been turned on this project. The parents of secondary school going children in Bandon and its surrounds are furious as 220 pupils applied for entry in 2020 to the excellent St. Brogan's college, which will be pushed to the extreme to take 118 children. This will leave more than 100 children without a place.

The only co-educational secondary school in Bandon is Hamilton high school which is full to capacity and has refused dozens of children entry in September 2020. Parents who live next to the schools and parents who are within walking distance of either school have had their children refused entry as the schools are already operating at over-capacity. These parents are not taking this sitting down. At a meeting on Monday night last they told me they are being advised to educate their children at home or to take them to a secondary school in Cork. These parents will not accept this. They have had their children in schools in Bandon from preschool through to national school and for dozens to be told there is no second level school place for their child is unacceptable. They are angry, and rightly so.

We need a short-term solution and a long-term solution. The population in Bandon is expected to grow out to 2025. The Department of Education and Skills has been caught napping as there is no long-term plan for Bandon and, shockingly, no short-term plan either, with promise after promise having been broken, leaving people in an unprecedented crisis. The Department of Education and Skills needs to carry out an immediate assessment of educational needs for a fast-growing Bandon. It needs to consult urgently with second level schools in Bandon and to consult with the community and parents, and to do so urgently. The long-term plan must be a new, standalone community-type college for Bandon, similar to that which exists in Kinsale and Skibbereen. Bandon needs this school and it needs it urgently. This is the long-term plan. The short-term plan to cater for the children excluded to date in Bandon is temporary classrooms at St. Brogan's college and Hamilton high school. This is by no means a perfect solution as St Brogan's college, which was built to cater for 400 children, is now catering for over 600 students and it may have to cater for more than 700 in light of the crisis unfolding for so many families.

Hamilton high school is at over-capacity and there has been no future vision for educational need for Bandon school-going children for decades. I have been raising this issue in the Dáil since I was elected in 2016. I have raised every year at every opportunity, including twice in the past three weeks. I know of the pain parents are suffering. Can the Tánaiste tell me today that every child who has been refused entry to St. Brogan's college or Hamilton high school, Bandon will be educated, as they have been all their lives, in Bandon from September 2020?

See this speech in context