Penrose tells Dail about parents' frustration regarding school places
Issued : Thursday 28 April, 2005
I compliment my colleague, Deputy O'Sullivan, for bringing this important matter to the floor of the Dáil. On 26 January, I had occasion to raise this matter with the Minister for Education for Science and I forewarned her about this problem. I requested that a meeting be held with Westmeath County Council comprising their forward planners and senior representatives of Education and Science to get a grip on this problem, but nothing happened. The problem is so serious in Mullingar and the surrounding areas that the county council wrote to the Minister on 29 March, following a comprehensive discussion, raised by my colleague, Councillor Dan McCarthy, at Westmeath County Council, about the availability of primary school places. I also raised this issue in the Dail myself, I have to say that in relation to the reply forwarded to me on the 26th January that someone wrote that script for the Minister stated there are 21 primary schools, including a Gaelscoil, and a new multi-denominational school, which commenced operation last September, serving Mullingar and its hinterland.
However, one must travel to the border of Longford and Meath. It is a wonder that whoever wrote the script did not tell the people of Mullingar to go to County Longford to get their children into schools there. Whoever wrote it does not know his or her geography. People who do not have public transport must travel to schools in Ballinagore, Ballynacargy, Castletowngeoghegan and Loughnavalley. They must travel in the opposite direction to where they work. What sort of a society is this? The Government can find money for everything but it cannot find money for schools.
What about Kinnegad and the great aspiration? Are they prepared to put on additional school transport to transport students to these schools of a lower class size? I do not believe Government programmes. There was a commitment to ensure that the average size of classes for children under the age of nine would be below the best international standard of 20:1. Let us talk about St. Etchen's in Kinnegad, which is on the main N4 route. There is a rapidly expanding population. There are 375 pupils on the roll, with 13 teachers, which is an average pupil-teacher ratio of 29:1. Every class from infants to first class has more than 30 pupils, which exceeds best international guidelines. So much for all the talk about education. The Government does not care a whit about anything. It would prefer to reduce tax for the wealthy so that it can say it does not have the money to build important infrastructure for young people. Lip service is being paid to education and the economic productive that derives therefrom, but what about ordinary young people from poor families? Should they not get the best start, the best classrooms and the best pupil-teacher ratio so they can learn and become the pioneers of tomorrow?
The people are waiting for the Minister in the long grass. It is an insult to say in the course of a parliamentary reply that one school had 50 pupils less in the past five years. Of course there were 50 pupils less because there well over 30 pupils in the classes in that school as they tried to accommodate all applicants. If health and safety standards applied, how could one have 34 or 35 pupils in a class? These classes had to be reduced to 30 pupils. There is great anger in Mullingar over the nature and tenor of that reply.
The Minister herself admitted in Tullamore some weeks ago that the target of pupil numbers in 2004 which was projected for Mullingar and its environs for 2008, was reached in 2004, four years ahead of schedule. The Minister should ask the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, for additional funding to deal with the crisis. I am sure he is not as blinkered as the former Minister, Mr. McCreevy, who created the problem with his right-wing ideology and let us give our young people a chance through the education system.
Indeed tonight as we speak in this chamber, there is a meeting being held by the parents of young students in the Dalton area of Mullingar, who cannot be facilitated in their local school at St Colmans. There is a great frustration evident among these parents, and this is what is happening in many other areas across Mullingar.
Boards of management and principals are bearing the brunt of this frustration, which is clearly unfair, as Minister, the only culprits in this area is your Government and your department which failed to cooperate or consult with the local authority to ensure that adequate school places would be provided for the ever increasing population.
The provision of extensions to various schools like Curraghmore, the Downs and Gainstown will only facilitate the accommodating of the anticipated numbers on the rolls for these school hinterland areas.
As requested by me in my question to you in the Dail in January 2005, I would ask that senior officials from your department would meet with the principals of all the schools in the Mullingar area, and the Boards of Management and also respond positively to the correspondence furnished to your office from Westmeath County Council in March 2005, and together let us ensure that this important issue for young students, parent s, teachers and Boards of Management is fully and comprehensively resolved once and for all.
