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

It is grimly ironic that the response of the Government and the Minister of State is that it is "a question of timing". Talk about stating the bleeding obvious. It has been 27 years so it is exactly a question of timing and it is beyond belief that a school could be waiting for 27 years.

We often hear Ministers trumpeting the fact that they have approved new schools and so on. What we do not often hear is that schools do not have permanent buildings and in some cases they do not have any buildings at all. That this has been going on for 27 years is beyond shocking. I do not understand where the funding hold-up is. Every time there are announcements of Government tax revenue figures, we hear they are at record levels. There are enormous amounts of money available to this Government, especially now, and I simply do not understand how the money cannot be made available to progress the Ballyowen Meadows Special School project, thereby ensuring that Gaelscoil Phádraig gets into its permanent school building.

Let us think about this. As there is no school hall, extracurricular or indoor sports activity for these pupils are gone if it rains. In many cases, classes are in decrepit prefabs and the school is terrified to get new prefabs because if it does, it might wait even longer because the Department will decide the school is grand because it has new prefabs. Some of these prefabs have been there since 2005.

All of the 58 schools deserve a commitment but a school that has been waiting for 27 years needs a commitment now. It deserves a commitment that there will be no delay, that this will proceed and that it will be in its permanent school location on its 30th anniversary.

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