The new north Kildare Educate Together school at Ballymakealy, Celbridge is now nearing completion. The school was first sanctioned by the Labour Party Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach, and has fought its way over a nine year period through the morass of financial and planning obstacles to get to this advanced stage. I compliment the board of management of the school and its principal, Ms Rita Galvin, and her staff on doing such a fine job in difficult and unsuitable circumstances for the past nine years. Their dream of a new modern school with all the required teaching aids and facilities is now nearly a reality – so near and yet so far.
They are still operating out of cramped and unsuitable prefabs and may have to stay in them. The new school will have eight new classrooms, two special needs resource rooms, a library-computer room, a general purposes room, a principal's office and a staff room. This state of the art facility has already cost €3.5 million of taxpayers' money and this is why I raise the issue.
This is a classic case of spoiling the ship for a ha'penny worth of tar. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Dempsey, representing the Fianna Fáil wing of the Government has decided in his absolute wisdom not to provide any funding for furniture for the new school, as he informed me on 22 February 2003:
The level of funding for the provision of furniture is set out in my Department's 2003 capital programme. On the basis of the budgetary allocation it was not possible to include any replacement furniture for Kildare Educate Together school, and the school must use their existing furniture in the new school.
The cost of the furniture required – and I stress "required" is €140,000 or 4% of the total cost already spent. While some of the old, well-used seats and desks can be transferred from the old school's classrooms, no furniture is available for the library-computer room, the two special resource rooms, the staff room, the office or the general purposes room. No provision has been made for blackboards for the new school and none is available from the old school. It must be an entirely new concept in the provision of educational facilities that schools will no longer be provided with furniture or blackboards. That beggars belief. What next – hospitals with no beds?
This is a shambles and a waste of €3.5 million of taxpayers' money which has already been spent. I demand on behalf of the board of the school that it be given clearance by the Minister to purchase the required furniture to allow the new school to come into use with no further delay.
