Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. Unfortunately, the first page is cut and pasted from a reply given last year. This is the problem I have in respect of school places in Kildare South. I have been highlighting this for a number of years, as have colleagues in the Oireachtas and on Kildare County Council. Thankfully, we see the results of that on the second page of the reply. There are four schools being either extended or newly built. The problem of course is where pupils will go for 2023 and 2024. For the person who wrote to me this morning, who is in 60th or 72nd place on the list for a school in Newbridge, that is a serious worry when we hear there may be a prefab located in the Curragh post-primary school to accommodate additional needs. What these parents need is certainty. I ask the Minister of State to go back to the Minister for Education and ask her to provide that certainty.

Last year, the Ceann Comhairle organised a meeting with Oireachtas Members which gave a lot of certainty to the parents that something would happen. I raise this matter on a continuous basis, as do other Oireachtas Members. All we need is to assure those people who need a place for 2023 that they will have one. If it is in temporary accommodation, that would be welcome but we need that assurance now. We cannot have parents with their children locked in rooms, which is what is happening at the moment, when their friends have been assured places yet their children are not getting places. That is what this is all about. I ask the Minister of State to take this back to the Minister. Maybe we will get an Oireachtas meeting up and running again and maybe then we will get the assurance those parents want for 2023. I welcome that there is building taking place but it is going to take two to three years. We do not want to be back here again next December.