Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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It will be a year to the day this Saturday since the general election. One of the crucial areas that came up time and time again on the doors in Kildare North was the lack of social infrastructure keeping pace with the new houses being built. I am sure the Tánaiste has experienced this as well in his own constituency, the neighbouring constituency of Wicklow. What I would like to raise today is school admissions, particularly for secondary schools. In Maynooth, Celbridge, Leixlip, Clane, Kilcock, Naas, Prosperous and every town in the constituency, we have children in sixth class who have not been guaranteed a place in secondary school. They have applied to and are on waiting lists for numerous secondary schools. This is causing natural worry and fear, particularly running up to Christmas. No child in sixth class should be worrying about where they are going to school in September next year.

It is clear to me that there is a lack of future planning and forecasting when it comes to school places in areas of high growth like north Kildare and indeed the Tánaiste's own constituency, where Greystones Community School has had a particular issue in terms of its expansion. I am thinking particularly of the principals who are trying to tackle this issue and find capacity. I have spoken with Siobhán McCauley, principal of Maynooth Community College, and Johnny Nevin, principal of Maynooth Post Primary, about trying to facilitate the amount of admissions they are getting. Naturally, it happens every single year. Time and again, the Department comes back with "increase enrolment". By increasing enrolment, we are essentially increasing class sizes when we have committed to reducing them. As well as that, we are looking at a capacity issue. These are two new schools, Maynooth Community College and Maynooth Post Primary. It was the largest investment by the State of €30 million at the time, with a capacity of 1,000 pupils per school, and it is far exceeding that.

One method the former Minister for Education, Deputy McEntee, introduced, was a pilot scheme for admissions. I welcomed it at the time. I think it is a great idea in principle, a type of CAO process. Unfortunately, that has not worked in Celbridge. We have Celbridge Community School, Salesian College Celbridge and St. Wolstan's Community School. In those schools, the pilot scheme has not been working as intended. It has created extreme frustration, particularly when the ethos of the schools are different. Salesians' is an all-boys school, St. Wolstan's is an all-girls school and Celbridge Community School is a mixed school. We need to look at capacity planning linked to demographics, not just based on the census but particularly on cases where we know there are planning applications going through for 500 or 600 houses in locations, to ensure that we have the places at primary and secondary school.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy is right. I have a note here. I am only going to read this bit out to show how frustrating what we receive sometimes is. The note is saying that for 2025, it is estimated that there are around 4,200 first year places available in County Kildare, with 3,794 sixth class pupils in the area, and on this basis the officials estimate a surplus capacity of around 400 places. Whoever wrote that note in the Department of Education and Youth could not be further from living in the real world. That is not the reality we experience in our constituencies in commuter land. It might work on a spreadsheet - there are this many places and this many children. It does not factor in what the Deputy referred to, parental choice and ethos.

A parent is the primary educator of their child. A parent has the right to decide the type of ethos they want in a school. We should not have any homogeneous view on that; it is about the parent's choice. As the Deputy said, we can also have a whole variety of different mixtures of schools and differences in population. What the Minister, Deputy McEntee, was trying to do, and I thank the Deputy for acknowledging her work on this, is a reform that he and I welcome. There is a reason it is done on a pilot basis, and it is the very reason Deputy Whitmore and I have seen in Greystones where, quite frankly, there have been real issues with it as well. It is a good idea, and we can see why it was run on a pilot basis. It is so we can actually get the roll-out of this correct. The Deputy has obviously seen that in Celbridge. We have seen it in Athenry, Clonakilty, Greystones and Tullamore. We do need to get to this system. The Government is very committed. The new Minister for education committed to building on the work of the previous Minister, Deputy McEntee, as well.

We have seen and will see a very significant increase in capital funding for education. In fairness to Department of education officials, the Minister for education and successive Ministers - the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, is in the Chamber - there have been real demographic pressures and challenges, including trying to quite rightly meet the needs of people with additional educational needs. The Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, is doing excellent work on that too. We will see a very significant increase in capital funding for the Department of education.

However, the Department and the Government have to listen very carefully to communities on this too. We can have all the offices and all the spreadsheets we want but, generally, the local school principal will not be out too far. We should not have to have a battle every year to convince the school principal that he or she is wrong only then to admit a couple of weeks later that, actually, maybe the school principal was right. It does cause too much stress. I join the Deputy in acknowledging the work of school principals - the likes of Ms McCauley, Mr. Nevin and others across the country.

Demographics cannot be seen as one kind of homogeneous thing right across the country. There are certain parts of our country where there are specific demographic pressures and bulges. The Deputy represents one such county; I represent another. We are absolutely committed to working with the Deputy on this. We are committed to learning the lessons of the pilot and how we can actually get that to the place we all want to get it to. I will ask that the Minister for education work closely with the Deputy in relation to the specific school projects he mentioned today.

Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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One frustration of school principals as well is that when the Department comes out looking for more spaces, it looks at communal spaces or an office and tries to say they could be classrooms. We have to protect those communal spaces for students as well. Whenever I speak in this Chamber, I always try to come with solutions rather than just raising issues all the time. I have some solutions that I would like the Tánaiste to take back to the Minister. As I mentioned, one is the capacity planning linked to demographics, particularly in the commuter area. A lot of us living in the commuter area experience it. The second is to introduce preference ranking, particularly on that admissions system, with a first, second and third preference. Third is to harmonise admissions criteria. We see different criteria for admissions policies in schools, which can really complicate admissions to most secondary schools and, indeed, primary education as well. There is also the issue of transparent oversubscription management. Anonymised data on applications, offers and waiting lists for each school should be published in order that we can know more. Finally, we need a feedback loop on the likes of this pilot and others to report on their success and, indeed, opportunities and challenges from that.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy approaches his first anniversary in the Dáil, he has definitely learned how this place works. I think he named every town in his constituency through the two contributions. I hear him. I also want to acknowledge and thank him for the constructive suggestions and solutions he has brought here on behalf of the schools, communities, parents and students he is dealing with in his constituency. They are sensible suggestions that I will feed back directly to the Minister, Deputy Naughton. The Minister of State at the Department, Deputy Moynihan, is also here today and will feed them back. Most particularly, that feedback loop is really important. Principals, parents, schools and everyone else are engaged with this in good faith. Those of us whose areas were chosen to be the pilot towns are all happy, but there is real learning from this to try to get it right. Having that feedback loop so the Department can hear that directly would be a good idea. I will certainly pass on the Deputy's solutions and keep in touch with him on it.