Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

People are very angry at this Government as it continues to waste any amount of public funds. We have the most expensive bike shed in the State, the most expensive children's hospital in the world, a security hut that cost €1.4 million to deliver and modular homes that were supposed to cost €200,000 but the Government ended up paying €440,000 for them. That is all in a couple of weeks. The list is endless. This Government has a track record of treating taxpayers' money like Monopoly money. For as long as I have been in this House, Ministers for Finance have talked about being prudent but in their next breath they announce the likes of €9 million for phone pouches. What a colossal waste. There is nothing prudent about it. Even worse is the effort to spin it as some sort of mental health measure. It is deeply cynical when schools are crying out for investment in a range of areas.

I want to raise the case of one school in my constituency, Gaelcholáiste Reachrann. It has been fighting for a new school build for 20 years. I have said before that my daughter was in primary school when we were promised this new school build. She is now in college. We had a big announcement of a school build in 2015. Planning was approved in 2019, elapsed in 2022 and approved again in 2023. All the while, students and teachers are going to school in prefabs which are in terrible condition. They wait and they wait. This €9 million could have been used to invest in our DEIS schools and to address educational disadvantage. It could have been used to tackle overcrowded classrooms or increase capitation to meet the never-ending increase in costs . This proposal is tone deaf. There are a hundred better ways the Minister could have spent this money. It is time to ditch it and spend the €9 million on actual supports for our schools.

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