Dan Boyle (Green Party)

I can cite an example of a public meeting I attended on 14 April concerning the Star of the Sea school in Passage West in the area I represent. Five Dáil Deputies and two Members of this House were present at that meeting. An expectation had been created regarding that school in 1999 when two primary schools merged, but it has still not been met. It is the fourth such public meeting I attended concerning that school over a three-year period and its status has not changed. When that kind of limbo approach exists towards schools building projects and the development of a community, we must recognise that the system is not working and we need to come up with better alternatives. During the nine-year timeframe while that school has been waiting for something to happen, during which little or no progress has been made, we have had four successive Ministers for Education Science and three separate systems of providing information as to where the school exists on a list within the schools building programme of the Department of Education and Science. Each of those systems was inadequate in its own right.

The encouragement offered in the Government amendment is a commitment towards providing or seeking to improve information systems, which is the crux of this problem. If people do not know the status of a school project, the expectations that are being created may never be met. The Minister spoke about the banding system, a type of a league system comprising bands 1 to 4. If a school is categorised in band 4, the school in question and community concerned can be assured that there will be very little activity or movement in the granting of that schools building project.

It is a little like asking a school and community to consider themselves the Kilkenny Gaelic football team of school provision. I did not mean to refer to the Acting Chairman's constituency. It is a reality that some teams never win games. Even if they win once every four years, what they might get——