John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Last night, I had a conversation with Sheila Murnaghan, who is the principal of Monksland National School. The Department of Education approached her in January 2022 to see whether she would like two extra classrooms to cater for pupils with autism. The school jumped at this expecting that it would be for September 2023. The Department came back and said it wanted it for September 2022. Being the professional board it is, the board of management got on it straightaway and got all the information in. I have the paper trail here. It shows that the Department is lacklustre to say the least in approving and acknowledging the information the school was submitting within a matter of hours of being asked. This is something that would be more appropriate for a Commencement Matters debate, which I hope to submit next week because I want to got into the detail of it, but the point I am making is that the Department is coming to a school, asking whether it would like to have extra classroom space for ten children who are already enrolled and nine families come September and then because of bureaucracy and perhaps civil servants not doing the jobs they are supposed to do, they are not getting the proper responses back in time to be able to get this over the line in what is a short period of time in the first place. A bottleneck exists and I would like to go into greater detail about it with the Minister for Education if that is possible.On the €96 million fine levied on AIB as a result of the tracker mortgage scandal, I heard on the radio this morning that this money is set to go back into the Exchequer. I ask that we have a discussion with the Minister on ring-fencing that money to contribute towards the cost-of-living crisis we are experiencing in this country and across the European Union. This €96 million should not go back into the general Exchequer to be spread all over; it should be ring-fenced and specifically used to help people with the cost-of-living crisis we are experiencing.