Victor Boyhan (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. I spoke to the Minister for Education and Youth yesterday outside the Seanad and she indicated that she hoped to be here for this Commencement matter but, clearly, she is unable to attend. I am sorry about that but I thank and welcome the Minister of State for agreeing to step in. I acknowledge that it is not his Department but I will set out the case as I understand it to be.

I was contacted by the independent councillor Michael Fleming from Stepaside in Dublin who asked me to meet the parents of Mountainside Montessori in Stepaside, County Dublin. I also met the management of the Montessori. Mountainside Montessori at Holy Trinity National School is an inclusive preschool provider. It is fully committed to offering equal access to all children and families and is inclusive of gender, civil status, religion, age, race, disability, family and membership of the Traveller community. It offers an open-door policy at all times throughout the school year and encourages close collaboration and partnership with the parents and guardians of the children. Mountainside operates the ECCE scheme, which offers up to two years for preschool education three hours per day to children under the age of two years and eight months. It opens from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday to Friday. Most of the children there follow on to Holy Trinity National School, which is on the same site, and the Montessori follows that school's calendar.

The community section of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is fully aware of the issues. They have been raised with the county childcare committee, which has engaged with Mountainside looking at various options, but nothing has been delivered. Effectively, having received notice from Holy Trinity National School in 2024 that its space would now be utilised and would no longer be available to the preschool, the preschool has not been successful in securing an alternative. Families affected by the cessation of Mountainside Montessori are very anxious about where their children will go in September. This is a reasonable, accessible and inclusive Montessori service in Stepaside, an area that is growing significantly. Working parents are now thinking about possibly having to pull out of work. They do not know where their children will be going on 1 September, which is a disappointment.

It has been brought to my attention that there are a number of prefabs vacant at Stepaside Educate Together Secondary School, which is very close to Holy Trinity and would be perfect for Montessori use under an agreed licence and subject to any terms and conditions required by Tusla. It is approved by Tusla and is compliant with all the regulations, so that is not an issue.

Clearly, this is about resources. I am talking about an interim measure for the next year. We, or the Government and TDs in that constituency, will have a problem on their hands on 1 September. I have seen correspondence from the Department of Education and Youth, which I had hoped to put to the Minister today, but she is not here.This is from the principal. The correspondence states:

I wish to advise that the Department of Education has instructed us that any existing rental agreement should not be renewed, and no other rental agreement should be entered into for the interim accommodation on the Stepaside ETSS school site [That is the Educate Together site]. The Department is currently reviewing accommodation requirements for the Stepaside ETSS to establish which units will be retained [these are the prefabricated units] and what will need to be removed to facilitate the construction of phase 2 of the school-building project.

In essence, those involved - all of the children and all of the parents - are anxious and need an interim facility. All that is being sought is the use of empty prefabs on a school site for less than 12 months, from September this year to next June. I hope the Department will commit to that. It needs to do something. We will of course hear pronouncements and condemnations by TDs across all parties and none in the next few weeks, but we now have time on our side to do something.