Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Earlier this week, I held a public meeting in relation to the need for a local school, a new secondary school, in Dublin 8. The meeting was well attended by local parents, many of whom have been campaigning for a new school for a while. There is a growing campaign building momentum and it is with great pleasure I rise to lend my voice to support that campaign and to help build that momentum.

This is an issue I have been raising for quite some time through parliamentary questions, letters to the Minister and Questions on Promised Legislation, and each time we are met with intransigence from the Department and opaque numbers and justifications.

The fact is there is a problem with how the Department of Education calculates where the new schools go and there is clear evidence to show that a new secondary school is needed for Dublin 8. Dr. JoAnne Mancini, in Maynooth University, has shown educational provision levels are far from equal across the country and has highlighted Dublin 8 in a recent academic article showing the significant challenge here.

While we can talk about the numbers, at the public meeting one of the people who came to speak was a teacher outside the area who spoke about his pupils from Dublin 8 and how they were at a huge disadvantage. They spend significantly more time travelling and this is impacting on their study. Of course, it is impacting on the carbon footprint. It is impacting on their independent mobility because they are relying on lifts from parents to get to far-flung schools instead of simply being able to walk or cycle to a school right beside them.

The parents raised the impact this was having on community. Primary school groups split up, with a splintering of secondary school groups. Students would go to school and make new friends.

God knows school can be hard enough at the best of times. You come back to your own neighbourhood and are isolated because you are not with your friends from school and the people on your road are off in a different school somewhere else. This impact is also reflected in a survey the parents did, which highlighted these concerns and the impact on their families and young people.

I know there will be various numbers in the Minister of State's response about the 314 school planning districts, but the numbers are opaque. There are no published capacity numbers publicly available relating to school capacity in an area. It is hard to get into the numbers, which creates a lack of transparency.

This afternoon, I received a response to a parliamentary question I asked about the intake ratio. The intake ratio is the percentage of children in a school planning district who get to go to school in that district. If it is at 100%, that means 100% of children are going to school in that district. For Dublin 8, the intake ratio is 55%. Some 45% of children in the district have to travel outside of their community to get a secondary school place. In the Blackrock and Booterstown school planning area, that number is 325%. Not only is the Booterstown and Blackrock area taking 100% of the children in the area, but it has enough capacity for an additional intake of 225%. There is not that capacity in Dublin 8. Blackrock recently got a new school despite having this huge over capacity. I have many more numbers, which I will speak about when I respond to the Minister of State. Essentially, however, there is a huge gap in the provision of second level schools in Dublin 8, and the children and the community are suffering.

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