Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome the opportunity to debate the Labour Party motion on the important issue of education, planning for it and the provision of primary school places.

Our rapid population growth is a starting point for this debate. My constituency of Wicklow falls within the greater Dublin area and it had an increase of 10% in population between 2002 and 2006, which is phenomenal. We must be fair and admit that this growth brings extraordinary pressure in terms of the provision of educational services. I admit that as a result of the rapid population growth in particular areas, we face difficulties with our education system. This significant population growth highlights the shortcomings of our education system, particularly the planning area.

Having served as a county councillor with Wicklow County Council for eight years, I am familiar with the way local authorities plan future educational provision. The difficulty as I see it is that the Department of Education and Science has a central role in educational planning while local authorities are responsible for land use planning, but often the two functions are not well co-ordinated. As a result, in the absence of a local area plan, areas grow considerably and densities increase, but the issue does not come under the radar of the Department until a local area plan has to be drawn up.

In areas where a local plan is drawn up and land is zoned specifically for educational purposes, developers effectively have a green light to proceed with residential developments. However, this does not always mean the provision of schools happens simultaneously. Often we find such large estates occupied by families, but unfortunately no new schools are available for the new population to attend.

We must address this challenge of educational planning. The Green Party believes this can be done through the establishment of a specific strategic planning section within the Department of Education and Science. Good quality information should be available to the strategic planning section and shared with relevant local authorities. This is essential for proper planning and would include population projections and accurate assessments of the capacity of existing schools. This is an area we fall down on currently, particularly with regard to the influx of new immigrant populations into specific areas. If this information was available to the Department and shared with local authorities and an emphasis placed on forward planning, we would overcome some of the difficulties in a few years.

The Labour Party motion raises the issue of procurement of land by the Department for the building of schools. Unfortunately, under the current system local authorities zone land for development, thereby greatly increasing the value of the land. The Department then has to pay top dollar for that land. We have seen evidence of a new approach with the Adamstown development where the approach was more integrated and developers were informed that when developing large residential estates it was their responsibility to provide a school as part of the development. Developers are often happy to do this as it does not add major extra costs to build a school while the estate is being constructed. The advantage of this approach is the simultaneous provision of the school and housing. The Adamstown project is a welcome, forward-looking development. I hope the partnership approach evident in that development, between the Department of Education and Science and South Dublin County Council, can be replicated elsewhere.

The location of schools is an important issue. We talk a lot about the issue of obesity and the need for children to exercise more. Often, however, when we select new sites for schools, we locate them on the outskirts of towns which means children will be car-dependent from the start. I call on the Minister to locate future schools in central areas of towns and villages in order that children can walk or cycle to school. It is important to do this. Local authorities have a safe routes to school programme, but often it is impossible to implement these programmes because of the location of the schools, particularly new schools.

On patronage and enrolment policies, the Green Party would welcome the creation of a State-run patronage system that would coexist with our current system. There is a danger we may be too critical of the provision of schools by the Catholic Church, which has provided a great service for the country. However, there is room for a greatly expanded and exciting new development of our primary education system. There is an opening for schools like Educate Together and the Bray School Project, which are forward looking, multi-denominational and co-educational. They are run in a democratic way which is different from the more traditional Catholic schools. The challenge is to find a model that will allow this new system to develop under a State patronage system. The debate must focus on how that will evolve.