Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will return to the question I asked the Taoiseach earlier about Clonkeen College and the plan of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust and the Christian Brothers to sell off its playing pitches. He agreed with me that this is wrong and that it will deprive the school, the ASD unit, local community sports organisations and others who use these fields but he said that there was nothing he can do. I would like to point out that this issue was raised multiple times during the term of the previous Government and we had the same hand-wringing. The point is that there is much bigger precedent involved. These religious organisations own a vast number of our schools and hospitals. They are publicly funded, yet the Government says that it is completely powerless when they decide to flog off lands to property developers at the cost of local community and school facilities when there is a chronic shortage of land for schools in our area. There is a queue of schools looking for permanent sites and there is a chronic shortage of sports facilities in the area. There has to be something the Taoiseach can do.

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