Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire on her new role. Scoil Chrónáin in Rathcoole is bursting at the seams. Census data show very clearly that Rathcoole is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. To keep up with this demand, Scoil Chrónáin erected six temporary prefabs on its playing pitch, which has deprived pupils of that facility. An additional two prefabs will shortly be added.

Scoil Chrónáin has looked forward to securing funding for a long-awaited school building for 45 years. When the Department purchased land from South Dublin County Council adjacent to the current school and it was assigned to a new school for Scoil Chrónáin, there was hope that finally the school would have the quality accommodation it deserves.

This hope was crushed last month when the Department published plans to build temporary accommodation for another school on this land. While the school is supposed to be temporary, once that school goes ahead there is concern that it may never leave. There is no permanent approved site for the new school, and it seems like history repeating itself. This move by the Department is blatantly unjust and unfair.

Scoil Chrónáin has been embedded in the community in Rathcoole for generations and deserves the opportunity to expand to meet the demand for education through the Irish language in the area. That fact that land is available for the school's extension adjacent to its current building seems to give it an ideal opportunity to allow a new school building to be built there when it is so badly needed.

It is unbelievable that the Department earmarked this land for the school and overnight made a decision to hand it over to a different school without any consultation with Scoil Chrónáin or the local community. It is a smack in the face for the school and for the Irish-speaking community throughout south Dublin and our community in Rathcoole.

Rathcoole Educate Together is equally deserving of school accommodation, but just not on land earmarked for another school. It is dishonest of the Department to mislead Rathcoole Educate Together into believing that it will have a temporary situation in Rathcoole. As the Minister will be aware from her background in education, once a temporary school is built it often remains in use for years to come. If this temporary school is built the likelihood is that children coming into junior infants in September will graduate from the same shabby temporary accommodation in years to come and Scoil Chrónáin will still be awaiting its long-promised building. If that happens, no one is a winner - not the school, the children or the parents.

This decision has triggered outrage in the local community, and I am sure the Minister can understand why. It was an overnight decision made by the Department that also places the Educate Together school in an unfair and difficult position. Because of the Department's failure to have the basic courtesy to even consult the community, hundreds of objections to the planning permission for this school have been made, which makes it inevitable that it will be appealed to An Bord Pleanála.

The Department has now had to advise the Educate Together school, which had believed that junior infants would be starting in a new building there in September, that new temporary alternative accommodation has to be found. The Department has made a bit of a mess here and Scoil Chrónáin, the Educate Together school and the community in Rathcoole will lose out. Will the Minister reverse this decision, provide funding for Scoil Chrónáin to build its long- awaited school on the land beside its school and resolve the situation for the Educate Together school?

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