Dáil debates
Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Topical Issue Debate
School Enrolments
2:35 pm
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, for his presence. The Minister will be fully aware that I have been consistently raising the issue of enrolment at Swords primary schools with the Minister and his Department officials for several months.
I understand that in January the Department provided the local authority with a comprehensive report on the availability of space for the coming year. Regrettably, it has been found that once enrolment was complete in those schools, there were excessive applications in the hundreds throughout the community of Swords. The list provided by the Department included schools that I consider to be on the periphery of Swords and that do not cater for the areas specifically suffering from excessive enrolment numbers. I offer some examples. In Holy Family junior national school, the figure is 107. In Holywell Educate Together national school the list is described as lengthy. In Thornleigh Educate Together national school the number is 25. In Swords Educate Together national school the number is 145. In St. Cronan's junior national school the number is 45. In Scoil an Duinnínigh the number is 30. In Gaelscoil Bhrian Bóroimhe the number is 40. Those are the numbers of people on the waiting lists for enrolment this September.
In the main, these children are four or five years of age. The remainder is made up of those meeting lower enrolment criteria, such as those living outside the catchment area. We should bear in mind that they could be resident in Swords but not be in the catchment area of the school in question.
We also have considerable enlargement of the community in Swords. For example, yesterday, in a welcome announcement, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government adverted to €20 million of infrastructural investment to free up development lands. A total of €5 million of this figure is for north-west Swords. This will deliver in the region of 3,000 properties in the coming five to seven years or thereabouts. A third of these will be social and affordable properties.
The head-room figures for Swords were provided to me by Fingal County Council planning department this morning. I am grateful to the council for the figures. The head-room figure for the end of the current development plan, which runs up to 2025, is 10,000 units. I realise the Department has ceased making the mistake of assuming that when a house is built, a couple move in and then four or five years later a classroom requirement arises. We learned that lesson in 2008, when 80 children showed up to a school in Balbriggan with bags, uniforms and books but no classroom space. However, the reality of the situation is that it does not appear the Department has adequately catered for educational demand in Swords. As a resident of the town for 13 years I was rather disappointed to learn this, especially having received assurances in writing from the Department in January this year. One particular school was in contact with me early on. I am referring to the Holy Family junior national school. The school has an extraordinary figure of 107 children on the waiting list. As far as I can determine, only 27 of those children have yet to reach the age of five years. The rest are of school-going age in my mind but have no place at the moment. There may well be duplication on these lists but I do not believe that all the 300 children or thereabouts that I have listed represent duplicates, nor do I believe that they are from outside the catchment areas or they would not have been accepted onto the school waiting lists in the first instance.
The Minister represents part of the county of Fingal. I imagine, therefore, he is aware that it is the fastest growing constituency in Europe and it has the youngest population in Ireland. Yesterday, the announcement was made on additional funding to free up development lands. I urge the Minister to give the River Valley community in particular serious consideration for funding. This is now at crisis point. Many parents in the community have been in touch with me. They simply have no option.
Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Alan Farrell for raising this issue. It is important to set out the backdrop. Our Department is seeking to provide 20,000 new places every year. This includes 15,000 new places for expanding populations and 5,000 necessary replacements. That is absorbing 80% of our budget. We have to be sensitive and ensure that when we commit to expand capacity, it is genuinely needed. The reliance on demographic calculations is at the core of what we seek to do.
I agree with Deputy Farrell that Swords is a growth area. Currently, we are undertaking a detailed demographic review throughout the country in light of the new census returns, preschool places and so on. They make up the dataset. I would be in no way surprised if Swords showed the need for additional capacity in future. The review will be available later in the year.
My Department is tracking enrolment at present particularly closely. There are 13 schools in the catchment. We have to work within the catchments.
The estimation is that there will be about 760 enrolments in junior infants. At this stage my Department remains confident that the availability of places will meet the requirements. As the Deputy rightly acknowledges, there is some duplication, with parents making applications to different schools at the same time. Nonetheless, my Department has been advised by three primary schools that they currently have junior infant places available. These schools have also expressed a willingness to offer further junior infant places for 2017 if necessary. We have the capacity to monitor this and respond, should it be necessary. I acknowledge this always creates uncertainty for parents and I sympathise with that. People may find that they are not getting a place in the school of their choice and that presents difficulties. However, given the pressure on our school building budgets, I have to ensure that priority lies with areas where there is clear population growth and additional capacity needed. That is why we go through this process.
The advice I have received from my departmental officials is that they remain confident that we will be able to meet the demands of the area. However, we are monitoring closely the acceptance of places in different schools and the knock-on effect those acceptances have on the waiting lists in other schools. Those effects are only materialising as we speak. We are keeping a very close eye on the situation. I am very conscious of the concern that Deputy Farrell has repeatedly expressed on this issue.
2:45 pm
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his remarks and would be interested to know the names of the three schools to which he referred in his response. I have been informed that approximately 27 of the applicants on the waiting list for the Holy Family junior national school were born in November or December of 2012, 14 of whom have siblings in the school. The Minister knows Swords well. If a parent is travelling from River Valley to St. Cronan's, Swords Educate Together or even to Scoil an Duinnínigh and has already deposited one child in a school in River Valley, it is not possible or acceptable to expect that parent to drive another child to a different school for the same start time, or within 15 minutes, because some of the school start times are staggered, to be fair. It is not acceptable to expect parents to cross the town of Swords, which has a population of 50,000 and a substandard internal road infrastructure.
My issue is not with the Minister but with the forward planning unit in his Department. My issue stems from the fact that these problems can be foreseen. If we were planning Swords tomorrow we would not build the schools in their current locations but we must work with what we have. The local authority delivered a plan a number of years ago on the development of Swords, entitled Swords 2035, which envisages a doubling of the population to 100,000. The census 2016 results will be published in a week or two and I am sure they will show a significant increase in the population of the town. Metro north will be delivered in seven or eight years which will free up lands in the Lissenhall area of north-east Swords for as much as 10,000 units. I am sorry to say that I do not believe that the Department can make an assessment at this particular moment in time that there are sufficient numbers of junior infant places. Unfortunately I do not have time to refer to the likes of Rivermeade national school, which is 4 km from the town and has two empty classrooms. That school is crying out for students. There are so many issues in the community that I believe are not being addressed adequately.
Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy raises a number of issues. The reason schools give preference to siblings is to try to avoid a situation where parents have to go to different schools. That is acknowledged in admission policies.
The Department has much improved its liaison with the local authorities. We rely on local authorities for the identification of new sites and liaise very closely with them in the planning and development process. I know that Fingal County Council's development plan is under review, which gives us an opportunity to look at plotting to ensure, as the Deputy says, that we match provision for schooling in the future with population developments. Our departmental planning system is responding to the actual intake of pupils. We rely on data on children born in the area, preschool numbers and so on. We look at all of these data to try to come up with a calculation.
It is my understanding that three schools, Scoil Cholmcille, St. Cronan's and Hollywell Educate Together currently have places on offer. Obviously, we must wait to see whether the rounds of offers, which occur in cycles, meet the needs in the catchment area. The Department believes they will do so but there are indications that should additional places be required, some schools would make provision for additional enrolments. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely.