Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the House for changing this Commencement debate around. It is hard to believe it takes five hours to travel here from my part of the world to this House. I raise the issue of school places in Clonakilty. I raised this issue with the Minister of State nearly 12 months ago. The population in Clonakilty has grown quite significantly since 2016. The census shows an 11.3% increase in the population. We need to see major investment in school places. I speak mainly about what is happening at Clonakilty Community College. The community college is basically at full capacity. We are looking at a scenario where the number of children going to the college is more than 660 and in the Sacred Heart Secondary School there are another 544 places. The issue here is that 156 people looked to go to the college this year. It is a co-educational school but mainly for boys because there is no other option for boys in Clonakilty. Due to that, 33 pupils had no place to go. It created significant hardship for families, the school community and everyone else associated with it.I acknowledge the principal and the board of management for the work they have done on this issue. They have found a way of accommodating nearly every single one. I am nearly sure they will accommodate the three who are left. It is down to the good work of the principal and the board that we are in that scenario.

This is now a matter of making sure we future-proof this problem. I will be before the Minister of State next year debating how we need to have school places for Clonakilty. Thirty kids were not allowed to go to the school, even though they were on the waiting list and all came from feeder schools. When you are on the feeder school system, you are intending and hoping to get a place and then you just do not get that place. However, it mainly affects the boys because the boys cannot go to the convent. They mainly go to the college and, because of that, they have no other option if they do not get a place. They must go outside of the town to places such as Bandon, where there is a significant waiting list and which is miles away from the actual locality. It is a matter of trying to join up all the dots. What will now happen is that 120 kids will go into the school and 100 will leave, and therefore there will be an extra 20 in the school. In the short term, we need modular accommodation to be put in place. That needs to be the first priority and focus of the Government. We need to make sure there is an appropriate PE hall and an Astroturf put in place because they will be building these modular classrooms on the playground.

In the long term, for a town the size of Clonakilty and the growth that is happening there, where the county development plan states there will be a predicted 1,000 more people living in the town by 2028, we need to have a significant look at how we will accommodate these kids because they will all need to school. The knock-on implications of the bad planning is the issue now. We need a short-term plan for modular accommodation put in place, but we also need to start talking about where we will put an extension or even another school for the Clonakilty area. Clonakilty is a huge catchment. It takes in places like Ring. I mentioned Ring and Darrary, where people had no option. They could go to Clonakilty. Bandon was miles away from them and Dunmanway was on the other side of the mountain, so it just would not make sense. These schools depend on Clonakilty having capacity to take in the kids. Unfortunately, however, there is a capacity issue. They have taken in the 120 and we now need to see a system put in place whereby they can be accommodated going forward, particularly for the next three years, from now until first class, because figures show there is a huge spike in the student population in Clonakilty. It is a serious issue that needs to be addressed in a short space of time.