Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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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.

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. It gives me the opportunity to set out for the House the position with regard to school places in Scoil Mhuire Allenwood, County Kildare. The Deputy is aware that Scoil Mhuire Allenwood is a coeducational primary school with a Catholic ethos under the patronage of the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. The school had an enrolment in September 2025 of 263 pupils. This represents an increase of 7% in the past five years.

I can confirm that Scoil Mhuire Allenwood recently submitted an application for temporary accommodation under my Department's additional school accommodation, ASA, scheme. This application is currently under assessment by the officials in the Department. I know the Deputy wants a concrete answer today, but I can tell him that the application is certainly under consideration.

I am pleased to confirm that the Department approved funding in 2022 to provide three mainstream classrooms, including two replacement classrooms, two special education classrooms and the reconfiguration of four undersized rooms to create two larger mainstream classrooms. This project is currently devolved to the school authority for delivery and approval was given for this ASA project to progress to stage 2b, planning, in November 2024. The Department now awaits a post-planning developed design report from the school for review. The school also received funding in 2022 to purchase a modular classroom to accommodate the 11th mainstream post. In 2024, funding was approved to repurpose a mainstream classroom to accommodate the opening of a special educational needs class, pending delivery of the permanent build project.

Scoil Mhuire Allenwood is located in the Prosperous-Clane school planning area. The Department's projections of primary school place requirements for that area indicate that enrolments at primary level peaked in 2019 and are decreasing, year on year. Given the general downward direction of overall enrolments in the area, the Department's focus for the assessment of such additional accommodation applications will be to analyse the extent to which enrolments at this school and neighbouring schools are serving the local area in the first instance. This will identify if some of the pressures on local capacity are arising from the enrolment of pupils from outside the local area where there may be other school provision opportunities available to them. That is the information I have been provided with. I am sure the Deputy will have more to say.

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State for the reply, with which I do not agree and with which the school management will not agree. I have talked in the Chamber previously about schools in south Kildare. As we know, it is one of the fastest growing areas in the whole country. Sometimes, I wonder what statistics and census the Department is looking at. I have just told the Minister of State what has happened in Allenwood over the past four to five years. There have been 40 applications for school places each of the past four years.

That is the difference when it comes to what is happening in Allenwood where the population has increased to the extent it has. It is not a downward trend; it is an upward one. I am sure the Department is receiving emails, because I have seen it copied on the emails I am getting from stressed parents and the school management . The latter does not know where to turn next because it is also getting the calls from parents who do not know where their children will go to school next September. Will the Minister of State bring my request back to the Minister for Education and Youth? I intend to follow up on this matter again - as I am sure, will every public representative in Kildare - namely that the prefabricated building requested, which the Minister of State said is under consideration, be allocated to Scoil Mhuire in Allenwood. We cannot have the number of children involved not having school places in September.

As stated previously, families meet up with other families whose children have school places. Children are in GAA clubs. There are excellent ones in Allenwood and the surrounding district. The children speak to one another. One child says they are starting in September and the other, as I have stated in this House on other occasions, says they are not. That causes a serious problem for families.

The statistics I have, which were provided by the school management, tell me the school averaged 40 applications for primary school places per year for the past four years. That is not a downward trend. We all welcome the fact that a new school building is on the way, but that will take a number of years. In light of that, will the Minster of State bring back to the Minister the request to allow the provision of this prefabricated building in order to ensure that those who need school places will have them and that the stress of family life will not come down to the fact there are no school places for many families in the Allenwood area?

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I am slightly concerned about the difference between the information the Deputy has and the information the Department has, because the figures do not lie. Enrolments are either increasing or decreasing year on year. I do not for one minute question the Deputy's bona fides regarding the information he has brought to the Dáil today, so I ask him to liaise directly. I will reflect what he said today to the Minister for education because the facts are the facts in terms of enrolments. If the facts show that there is an increase in the enrolment and it is not that there is a duplication of applications going into a lot of local schools, that should certainly make a strong case for the school to get the building - the bricks and mortar - it deserves in order to be able to accommodate students and make sure they have school places. We do not want to see parents under the stress of having uncertainty about whether their children will have places in schools.

The Department is aware of enrolment pressures and demand for additional school places in some areas. It is important to note that enrolment pressures can be driven, as I said, by duplication of applications, applications from outside a catchment area and school-of-choice factors. Notwithstanding that, in some areas the demographic pressures and other factors are driving a requirement for additional school places. Major new residential developments - perhaps that is happening in the Deputy's area - have the potential to alter the demand for school places at local level. That can happen quite quickly. In this regard, as part of the demographic demand analysis, the Department monitors planning and construction activity in the residential sector in the local area. This involves the analysis of data sources from local authorities and the Central Statistics Office, alongside engagement with local authorities and the construction sector. In this way, up-to-date information on significant new residential developments is obtained and factored into the analysis that is conducted by the Department. It is necessary to ensure that school infrastructure planning is keeping pace with those changes at local level in circumstances where it is a consistently evolving picture in the context of planned new residential developments.

I appreciate what the Deputy said and will reflect it to the Minster for education.

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State.