Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is welcome and I thank her for being here. I rise to raise with her the important topic of St. Mary's Special School in Navan. It has a requirement for a new building. A promise was made to provide one. It has been in existence for 43 years in Johnstown in Navan. The school has had a long-running battle to acquire this purpose-built building to educate the near 100 children who attend there from all across Meath and different counties. These children face the greatest challenges in life and have to rise early in the morning to ensure they are transported to their place of education. They were overjoyed in 2011, nine years ago, when the school was at last sanctioned for a purpose-built building to meet the needs of the pupils. Nine long years later they are still in temporary accommodation.

What makes this worse is that St. Mary's Special School was to be part of a three-school educational campus in Johnstown. It was an ambitious plan by the Department and a welcome one. What is annoying is that the other two components of that educational campus, the primary school and the secondary school, accommodate 1,000 students each. They flew through the planning, approval and architectural processes in the Department in Tullamore. They are built and open, thank God. What does it say that, nine years later, the most urgent component of the campus, St. Mary's Special School, is nowhere on the radar of the Department? Those students are being left behind.

A year and a half ago in March 2019 I stood on this spot to raise this particular issue with the then Minister of State, Jim Daly. It is frustrating that, a year and a half on, we are no nearer completion. The Minister of State at the time, Mr. Daly, referred to how it was part of the Department's six-year capital programme from 2015-21. Even at that, we should be welcoming the opening of the school next year but we are nowhere near there.

Let us roll back two years ago to 2018. The then Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Richard Bruton, led a troop of Ministers to the site. He met students and there were colourful pictures on the front page of the newspaper - fair play to the Meath Chronicle - and calls to build the school immediately. They have been listening to this for nine years. Yet, two years on from that visit there is still no movement on this particular project.

The parents of the children there now know their children will never see or realise the dream of being educated in the new facility. Hundreds of children, unfortunately, have gone on during the past nine years. They have been unable to enjoy a proper educational facility. I think of the many children over 43 years of the existence of this school. They are angry. They do not believe what is said anymore. They are looking for hope. Their children might not get the opportunity to enjoy this facility.

I hope the Department will not toy with the emotions - I am directing this to the officials - of the people involved anymore. They have had enough of that. They are looking for a clear pathway with a timeframe on when this will be delivered.