David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle’s office for selecting this and I thank the Minister of State for being here to take the debate. I am disappointed the Minister for Education cannot be here but I am sure she is very busy with other work.

Of all Ministers to the House, the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, will appreciate what I will say. We have in Carrigtwohill one of the finest school campuses in the country. It just opened last year. It has a 1,000-pupil secondary school - community college - and two primary schools with 24 rooms each, all on the one campus. They are state-of-the-art, extremely modern and newly-built. It is amazing. If the Minister of State is there someday, he should have a look. It is fabulous to see. I think it is the biggest project the Department of Education has ever undertaken on its own. It has everything. This campus has everything except a playing field.

The perplexing thing is that just behind the schools over the fence is a full field owned by the Department of Education, completely level, recently grassed and completely fenced in. It could be used as a field now but it is not.

I have raised this on a few occasions here. Initially as part of the county development plan, in the initial planning application, it was down as a playing field for the schools. However, it cannot be used by them. I have raised it but I have not gotten a satisfactory response. I have been told that the lands to the south of the site have been designated as a flood retention area as required under the campus flood mitigation design. These lands are designed to retain overflow floodwaters during periods of heavy rainfall and therefore are unsuitable for development. Nobody wants to build anything on this land. It is unsuitable for it as it is a flood retention area. However, at the moment and for the past number of months, it is perfect dry and level - not a dip. It is a playing field, in essence.

I hope the Minister of State has some good news related to my request of the Department of Education. I ask that the Department hand this over to the ETB, which I understand has written to the Department requesting - I do not know if it got a response – that this be made available to the three schools and 2,000 students who can go out there and play football, hurling, soccer and whatever else you play on grass. I know there are hard court areas, basketball areas and so on, and that is fine. I am sure the Minister of State will agree with me that it is hard to beat playing on grass and a grass field for kids to run on and play whatever they are playing.

I truly implore the Minister of State to personally look at this. They are talking about a flood retention area. All over the country we have playing fields that flood and become waterlogged during wet weather but when it is dry, people can play on them. This is no different. I do not think it will ever really flood. I am interested in the Minister of State’s response. I hope he has not a cut-and-paste response, like I have in my hand now, and he will go back to the Department of Education after this and say that this needs to be done.

I also want to say to those in the Department of Education, and I hope they are listening this morning, that the work it has done on this school is magnificent. The way it has been done is a fantastic example of best practice. People are absolutely thrilled with it. Carrigtwohill is one of the fastest growing towns in the country.

The children were using the GAA lands close by, but they are closed for the moment for rejuvenation. They are doing some work on them, so the children cannot use them either. They have nowhere to play now except hard court areas, which truly does not compare at all with a field that is just over the fence. They are looking out at it. How frustrating that must be for the staff, for PE and so on, especially when we look at all the work that has been done with respect to the curriculum and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and so on, and the emphasis on physical education and how many hours of physical education students need – 135 hours of PE of all junior cycle students, for instance, as a minimum.

I am interested in what the Minister of State has to say and I hope he has good news.

See this speech in context