David Norris (Independent)

I wish to share time with Senator Mullen. I welcome the Minister of State to the House for this useful and pertinent debate. Senator O'Toole refers to the inordinate amount of parliamentary time consumed by these matters. Every Member has tabled an Adjournment matter on schools building projects and has large files on the matter and numerous examples have been outlined in the debate. The Minister attempted to address a number of the issues but, as Senator O'Toole said to me when I whispered in his shell like ear, what one needs is the spade in the ground. Getting on to bands may sound good but action, a timetable and information are needed. One does not need to be given the run-around and this is why there is so much frustration among school authorities and why they write to even people like myself. Members receive a significant number of inquiries in this regard.

The motion is extremely sensible, as it proposes clear visibility in the criteria and clear accountability so that schools know their ranking and have an idea of the date for a project. There are too many prefabricated buildings and it is not fair on the children. I welcome Senator Boyle's contribution. He proposed a decent approach. He accepts the reality, as did Senator O'Sullivan, and it is not easy when one is on the Government benches to acknowledge this. That indicates we are all going in the same direction, although it is not possible for the Government Members to be as trenchant as some of us.

I refer to the new Carbury school in Sligo. It is the only Protestant school in the town. It began as a model school in a historic building, which is now the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, having been handed over by the board of management. In 1977 a new school was built on a site belonging to the Incorporated Society of Ireland, next door to Sligo grammar school. Because the school has been successful, conditions are cramped, with six portakabins on the campus. Three are used as classrooms, two for resource classes and one as a staffroom. The school has no dedicated assembly hall for daily use. The teachers and pupils must juggle between classrooms, having to move desks and so on to take part in indoor activities. The portakabins are rented, which is an expense. The parents have raised the amount required — €63,000.

In 2006, the Department granted approval for a new school building and planning permission was granted in April 2007. The parents have been campaigning for the school for ten years. They were asked to get ready to decamp. They received planning permission in December 2007 and in the same month a decision was made not to proceed. This is dreadful and demonstrates the kind of agony and frustration applicants are put through.

This matter related to Carbury school, but to demonstrate the non-sectarian nature of my interest in my constituency, I would like to refer to the Holy Rosary national school in Oldcourt, Dublin 24. Sr. Mary O'Neill and some of the parents were in touch with me about the school. One of the pupils wrote to me and said they used to have a playing field, but now it is covered with portakabins. This little girl told me she and her friend found a dead rat one day and a girl who walked on it was sick and had to go home as a result. This is grim stuff for a child to endure. A mother of some of these children wrote to me and said her oldest child is in a prefab and her next child will be in one next year. They move the children on from the prefabs each year because the conditions are so bleak. The buildings are miserable, cold and rat infested.

Conditions are terrible. Teachers going to class have to drive their cars between the prefabs in the playground and it is only a matter of time before a child is injured. The home-school-community liaison teacher has a desk in a corridor. Is this acceptable in this day and age, considering these cold, flimsy prefabs cost the State a non-returnable €100,000 a year?

The Minister also should give consideration to the Montessori schools which are anomalous because they get no funding at all. The Montessori school in Celbridge, the Glebe Montessori junior school, needs to upgrade its building and equipment, but it gets no assistance because it is not on the register. This is another little bureaucratic technical manoeuvre that gets the Department out of funding one of the best educational systems in the country. I hope the Minister takes this on board and considers the possibility of providing funding to Montessori schools which do such an excellent job, in particular the one at Glebe.