Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a huge honour to be here today with the students of St. Andrew’s National School. I thank their teacher, Mr. O’Dwyer, and all of their teachers for facilitating their visit today.

What I want to raise today is the frustration that is sometimes felt by communities, community organisations, schools and school communities with the bureaucracy of the Department of Education. This is keenly felt when there is a block or a lack of progress in accessing essential services or advancing school projects, including in the area of special education. In this case, it is actually as fundamental as a lease agreement between the Department of Education and the Le Chéile school in Tyrrelstown in west Dublin. There is no lease and as a consequence, it is very difficult for clubs, community organisations, and childcare operators to access facilities in the school.That should not be happening. There has been a lot of discussion about movement in that regard, with the Government putting more pressure on schools to open up their facilities, which are paid for by taxpayers. There is no point in facilities lying empty at weekends or in evenings. What makes this situation even more difficult is that a community centre in the area and other schools have been affected by the Western Building Systems structural deficiencies. Some 40 schools need to be remediated. We have a community centre that needs to move out of its building into other premises to sustain all of the fantastic organisations and clubs that use the community centre, and to keep them going, including the Dublin Sonics Basketball Club, which has 200 members, both boys and girls. It is essential that the Department of Education moves on the need for the lease. I thank the community centre for all the work it is doing. The Acting Leader can imagine what it is like for them trying to reach out to other premises to find places for their clubs to continue.

I met Early Childhood Ireland yesterday. It has put together a great plan of public good childcare. One of the things it spoke about was the need for us to recognise and move towards early educators being on a similar platform to primary school teachers. That is something I ask the Minister to seriously consider.