Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to express my view and then I will make a decision whether I will or will not proceed. I am very disappointed. This is the third time I put down a Topical Issue debate and the senior Minister has not come in. People want to be elected to this House, and when they get elected, they want to become Ministers. When they become Ministers, it is like that thing we used to have in the newspaper, spot the ball. Now it is spot the Minister, because you cannot get a Minister into the Oireachtas anymore. This is their place to be, in Dáil Éireann, not wherever they are today. This is the third time the Minister for Education has refused to come into this House to answer queries that I raise. Here we are again today. There is no senior Minister here again. I see it when I am in the Chair myself. That they are not here is total disrespect for people who bring in motions. I will take this because it is such an important issue. If the senior Minister and no officials are here, I am sure this is only wasting my time. However, this is such a serious issue that I will raise it.

It is about Holy Trinity National School. It is based in a Church of Ireland school building that is more than 200 years old. The building was first deemed unfit for purpose by the Department of Education in 2010. It has been on the school building list since 2015 and due on site in 2018. The principal, Orla Brickenden, asked the Sisters of Mercy for an abandoned former school – the Scoil Phádraig site. The nuns agreed to give the site to Holy Trinity for a new school. The Department of Education took ownership of the site. Years passed. The Department and the local authority wrangled over who would take over the ownership, and eventually it was taken over. The Department of Education then attempted to put Holy Trinity National School and Education Together in the same site. That did not work. More years passed. In 2022, the Department wrote to Holy Trinity and acknowledged the frustration and significant concerns caused by the delays on this project. The Department undertook to do work to advance the project until the brief had been completed as expected by Holy Trinity. In October 2022, a design team at the cutting edge of advanced environmental school design was appointed. To be fair to the school, it played the game. It saved the blocks. It was going to be environmentally friendly and the Department was delighted with that. But then what happened? In March 2024, the Department announced that while the Holy Trinity school project was to process through the various stages, the Department intends to use the old building and has explained what it will do. It was going to spend a fortune of money putting another school in the old building because of overcrowding in the other school.

This is not fair on this Protestant school. Ministers go all over the world lecturing other countries about equality and everything else. We are trying to have it in this country. This is a small Protestant school that was promised its school building since 2015, yet here we are now. The Minister for Education and the Department of Education will now do up an old school, put another school into it for the short term, then knock it and rebuild an old school. What is going on in the Department of Education and what is it doing to this project and the school? It talks about everybody working together on this island. Well, it is not showing a very good example when this Protestant school is being treated like this in the town of Westport. I call on the Minister to immediately get some other place for the overcrowded school and start the build on Holy Trinity school.

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