Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

It is more than 6 km from Kildare town to the Curragh Camp. No matter what road is taken, and even the motorway can be taken, there are no footpaths. The majority of the three or four routes are winding country roads, with little visibility and a lot of danger for anyone who might want to walk them. I will come back to this.

I want to discuss Curragh Community College. This is, and has always been, a fine school, but its time is coming to an end. Even the wonderful principal and the board of management say that the school is not fit for purpose. At present, there are a lot of dangers in the school. This school also has its buckets and its fire dangers, as has previously been discussed. I want to raise the issue of the need for a school bus from Kildare town to the Curragh for the next couple of years. Why I am raising this is that, thankfully, after a ten-year wait, a new secondary school, which will have the name of the Curragh Community College, is to be built in Kildare town. Planning permission was obtained this year and it is proceeding, according to replies I have received from the Minister for Education and Youth. There will be 300 students going from Kildare town, the Curragh and the surrounding areas to the Curragh Community College this September. The problem is that a lot of the students coming from Kildare town have no way of getting there. Many of their parents have been carpooling but that causes problems as well. As I said earlier, there are no footpaths on the roads leading to the college.

A new school is being built in Kildare town. Many of the pupils who will attend the school are already living in Kildare town. When the new school is built, students from The Plains, Melitta Road and other estates in the area will have to walk 200 yards to the new school. However, they are currently 6 km away. They have come to me and other public representatives in Kildare South and we have asked the Department to put on a school bus route in the interim while the new school is being built. Lo and behold, the reply we got was that the pupils were not going to their nearest school. How can they go to their nearest school? At the moment, the school that is there, Kildare Town Community School, is oversubscribed. The only option for many new students in Kildare town is to attend the Curragh Community College. This is the conundrum. This is the only possibility for them to get a secondary education. As I said, within two to three years, or however long the new building takes, they will be able to walk the 200 or 300 yards on safe footpaths to the new school. However, in the interim, they have been told that they are not attending their nearest school. I hope the Minister of State will have some good news for me. I ask him to provide a bus service for those students for the next two to three years so that the parents and the new pupils attending the Curragh Community College can actually get to the school for those couple of years while we wait for the new school building. I hope that the Department sees sense on this. It is a very sensible request by the parents of children attending the Curragh Community College.

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