Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I want to talk about the village of Allenwood, which is in my constituency in County Kildare. It is a beautiful village, not far from Naas, Clane and Rathangan. It is right in the middle of the county. It is a country village, or perhaps I should say that it was a village in 1991, when 303 people were living in it. The latest census, taken in 2022, showed 1,685 people living in the village of Allenwood.

The reason I have raised this Topical Issue is to talk to the Minister of State about Scoil Mhuire Allenwood, an amalgamation of two primary school schools, that opened in 2017. The census taken in 2022 told us there were 142 children in the village of Allenwood between the ages of zero and four. The problem we have with Scoil Mhuire Allenwood is that there are 42 applicants for a school place in September next year but only 28 places available. Unfortunately, that leaves a deficit for a number of families. We have spoken previously about the stress that many of those families are under. Many of them also have a child - a sibling of the applicant child- already in the school. That is causing distress for parents. Where will their second child go to school?

The school is trying to do everything it can to facilitate new children and to facilitate those who do not have a school place at the moment. It previously put prefabs onto the school grounds. It is using every part of the existing school to accommodate children. There are waiting lists for every class in Scoil Mhuire Allenwood.

The school was granted an extension, which was announced a number of years ago. We have been told lately that the process is at stage 2b. That is where it sits at the moment. That leaves us with a deficit of school places for next September. It leaves us with problems for all those families. At this stage, Scoil Mhuire Allenwood is getting up to 40 applications for primary school places per year. That has been the case for the past four to five years and it has created a problem for the school management. The school management wants to work with the Department of education and the local community to ensure that no child who lives in the Allenwood area is without a school place this coming September.

The school also applied for a prefab to allow it to accommodate those children without a place in September while the new extension is being built or when construction starts. My request is for the Department to allow that prefab to be placed on the grounds. The management will work with that. A prefab would allow those children without a place to have a much-needed place for September while we still wait for the various stages of the new build to go ahead. I ask the Minister of State, on behalf of the Minister for education, to confirm that the Department will allow that prefab to be placed on site to allow those children to have places and to take the stress off working families who do not have that place at the moment and are contacting me and, indeed, every public representative in south Kildare. As the Minister of State knows, the most important thing for children is that they know what school their friends are going to come next September. At the moment, there is too much stress on families in Allenwood and too many families do not have a school place.

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