Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

For the sake of the Minister of State, I will set out a brief history of the matter I raise. When the greyhound track in Harold's Cross closed, Councillor Mary Freehill and I ran a campaign for the site to become an educational campus for primary and secondary schools. It was always our intention that local children would be able to attend the secondary school rather than have a system drawn up based on postal codes. Unfortunately, what we are starting to see is that local children from Dublin 8 and 12 will be excluded from the secondary school even though they will attend primary school and preschool with their neighbours and friends. On account of a mandatory line drawn on a road, they will be excluded from the secondary school.

In the case of children in Dublin 8, the alternative is an Educate Together school on Beach Road in Sandymount, which is approximately 5 km away. That may as well be 50 km given Dublin traffic. It is almost impossible to shift a child across the city against the natural flow of traffic. It is inhuman to put such pressure on parents and to forcibly break up long-term friendships that develop as children go through primary school by sending them in different directions.

An educational campus will be developed on the Harold's Cross site. Parents and children will be able to walk out their front doors and see this new campus but will be unable to send their children to its schools. That is entirely wrong. It was not the intention of Councillor Mary Freehill, Senator Ivana Bacik or I when we fought the campaign to get a school in the location. We now see parents whose children will go to secondary school in 2020 or 2025 in major distress. This issue affects substantial numbers of children. Up to 150 children leaving Educate Together schools will not have an opportunity to continue friendships and partnerships with children with whom they started in junior infants class. It is a disgrace.

I have been raising the matter in this House since 2017 and it needs to be addressed. It greatly affects the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Byrne, who was here just now. It is not a Dáil constituency issue. It is a human issue and we have to find a solution to it.

I call on the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy D'Arcy, to raise this matter with the Minister for Education and Skills. The Minister should sit down and talk because we need to find a solution now. The alternative for these parents is to send their children to fee-paying schools. There are no other schools in the area that provide co-educational multidenominational education at secondary level. In this day and age, we should not be trying to force parents to choose fee-paying schools. Parents will sacrifice everything they can for their children, but we should not ask them to make this particular sacrifice, especially when we are developing a 1,000 pupil campus in Harold's Cross. I appeal to the Minister of State to make the case strongly. We have to keep communities together. We have to give lifelong friendships that develop in schools a chance for the good of the children and the community. I am calling for this issue to be looked at closely.