Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is good to see Senator Casey in the Chair today. I thank the Minister for Education for coming in to the Seanad today and it is very much appreciated.

I wish to refer to the Galway Educate Together Secondary School and Cuan na Gaillimhe Community National School, which is a Steiner school. I have spoken to the Minister about them before and I mentioned one of them on the floor of the Seanad during the Order of Business. It took many years of activism and parents really pushing for the Galway Educate Together Secondary School to get the go-ahead in Galway. There are a number of Educate Together national schools in Galway and now we have the first Educate Together secondary school for the whole county so it covers a couple of catchment areas. At the moment the secondary school has 87 pupils between first and second year. Next year, there will be a new intake but that has been capped at 48 students purely on the basis that there is not enough space. This should be a school that can take up to 1,000 pupils but it has such a small footprint and prefabs are stacked on top of each other. I know the school staff and they are wonderful. I am very proud that we have this school in Galway. I am very proud of the work of the teachers and they have been really patient. I know that the Department has helped them in lots of other ways because of the space problem. The need is urgent now because come September 2022, the school will be unable to take anyone else. We all know and understand that there is a period between planning and things progressing to the next stage. However, a signal needs to be sent to the teachers because they have waited patiently for so long and I would hate that we could not give them some good news.

I was involved in the setting up of Cuan na Gaillimhe, in putting in the application a number of years ago, and we got the go-ahead in 2016 along with an Educate Together school. It started for two years in a building with an insurance company on the first floor. The school has now moved into prefabs located at the back of the Knocknacarra Educate Together school and Cuan na Gaillimhe has been there since 2018, waiting to hear.The Minister will know that the patronage was transferred from Lifeways Irelands to Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board, GRETB, in 2019. Regardless of this, those children are children wherever they are. They and their parents need some certainty that they will be able to move on. I understand that it may be as long as 48 months before the school will be able to move and that there is still no concrete indication as to whether space will be available on the grounds of another school, one of the sites being considered. However, the school will have an enrolment of 94 by September, comprising new students and those already there, and there is no space to expand further. The school has applied for a grant for emergency works. I understand this was turned down but that it is being appealed. It is important to realise that, even if this grant was given, the works would not be completed by September so we are talking about preparations for the following year. In addition, there is no space for students with special needs. Neither school has an autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit. I ask the Minister to expedite this matter and to see what she is able to do.