Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Seanad Éireann" and substitute the following:

notes the record level of activity under the school building and modernisation programme in recent years and the innovations in the design and delivery of school buildings that have been put in place to ensure that extra accommodation is delivered as quickly as possible;

further notes the improvements that already have been made in forward planning for new schools and those provided for under the new programme for Government;

welcomes the fact that construction work this year alone will deliver more than 700 classrooms to provide permanent accommodation for more than 17,500 pupils, mainly in developing areas;

supports the provision of €4.5 billion for school buildings under the NDP and the plans therein to provide 100,000 extra school places;

welcomes the major expansion in supports for children with English language needs in recent years; and

acknowledges the Government's commitment to promoting successful integration in our schools.

I am proud to have been appointed Government spokesperson on education and science. As a teacher by background, this topic is close to my heart and I look forward to a long tenure in the upper House — currently, I have five years and nothing more in mind — as I come to grips with what is a large brief.

I agree with Senator Alex White that education is a key Ministry. My starting point will always be simple in that education is a cornerstone that unlocks potential in each of us, our children and their children. It opens doors into new worlds and does not need to be the same door or have the same paths for all who experience it to be a successful encounter. That is exciting.

Education will help us survive and thrive, but it does not begin when a child reaches a school gate aged approximately five years or, in my case, three. As I did not get out of school until I was 27 years of age, I had a long sentence. I aspire to the evolution in Ireland of the acceptance that parents and children bonding from birth or pre-birth and the interaction of parents and children from the earliest stage is the starting point of the greatest potential for education. The quality time parents can give their children until the latter are six years old is the greatest investment they can make. This must be supported in both ideology and reality by the Government, be it through Life Start or similar programmes. I can give many countries as examples, in particular those in the southern hemisphere, where the battle is already won.

Too often, we will stand here and muse on the need for more supports and resources for students when they go from pre-school to primary school, from primary school to secondary school and from secondary school to university. I am a great advocate of prevention being better than cure. Access to schools is a topical issue in the part of the country from which I come, but it may not be popular or topical for the same reasons held by those who tabled the motion.

I want to address the issue of a failure to pre-plan in respect of hundreds of houses but no schools being built, as raised by Senator Alex White. In Border areas, there was a court case relating to the right to go to school. This is not an issue of the lack of facilities in, for example, Donegal, but of the fact that new residents moving there from Derry city wish to continue their education in Derry. The term "grannying" has become synonymous with the use of granny's address in Derry rather than the Donegal address when filling in the form for the next school term. This raises a number of interesting questions such as pre-planning, putting in place the correct resources and not creating white elephants.

The population of practically every Border village in County Donegal has exploded in a short period. Had the Department of Education and Science followed the planning application process and, on foot of the hundreds of houses being built at any time — sometimes as many as 500 — put in place new school accommodation, it would have yielded some white elephants because the children did not materialise. Instead, they kept "going North", as it were — politically North and geographically South. Some small schools in County Donegal struggle with numbers, the retention of teachers and excess classrooms where numbers have declined, yet the population has grown significantly. In other parts of the country, the population explosion has yielded pressure.

There is a need to encourage more accuracy in the mechanisms to ensure children born today can be identified and that a concept is developed as to where they will be schooled, irrespective of their race, religion or origin. The identification of children born in the Twenty-six Counties has become easier in that the children's allowance scheme has been computerised to such a level that the book, as mentioned at the scheme's launch, is on the mat as soon as the baby is carried across the threshold. Can this be a starting point? The current starting point is census information, but should we pursue the collection of census information where people have not filled in the forms? Some people in my area would not fill in a census form.

Information is crucial, but it must be accurate. In my area, relying on baptismal records is not accurate. I do not believe this is a Border or rural issue because there is a greater fluidity in the movement of people than before. Currently, where a child is baptised is not necessarily where the child will go to school. In making these observations, I strive not to defend the Department, but to point out the definite logistical issues that are far from straightforward. If many others follow the new Minister for education in the North, who lives in a Border region and whose children are schooled in the North, it makes for a fluid Border. While I advocate a 32 county Ireland, we must question the logistical nightmare for all involved across the island in terms of resource decisions until there is in place a good information exchange mechanism.

Once numbers can be predicted, we move to the issue of responsibility for school provision. While the Department is responsible for educational matters, there is a question of whether there is a role in the planning permission to put an onus on the developer to assist in the provision of the schools, be it in the form of sites or public private partnerships.

Given that my time is so limited, I wish to underscore that I have witnessed considerable investment in schools at primary and post-primary levels. I am on the board of a primary school beginning a building project for an eight-teacher facility. While I welcome that facility, my old primary school is either in the process of being knocked down or will be knocked down shortly, about which I am disheartened. I am the chair of a second level school that, as a multimillion euro investment, is a prime example of how to do a project well, fast and within budget in an innovative way, of which the Minister is aware. This is not to say that Moville Community College does not need completion, that Scoil Mhuire and Crana College in Buncrana do not need building programmes, that gaelscoileanna are not searching for permanent facilities or that Carndonagh Community School does not want to scale down and consolidate to cope with the decline in numbers. Rather, these and similar locations have better chances to progress under the current Administration. I wish the Minister well at the beginning of her new term in office because she understands and is committed to education.