I do not intend to speak in any general way about education. Deputy Jones has dealt with this in a very comprehensive way, much more so than I could attempt to do. I should like, however, to make a few comments about educational facilities in my constituency in County Dublin. Development is taking place there at a very rapid rate. This continues, but the educational facilities being provided are not keeping pace with it. We had experience in certain areas less than a year ago where large numbers of children could not gain entry to primary schools because there were no schools available locally and the schools that were in existence were completely overcrowded.
Were it not for the advent of prefabricated schools and the co-operation of site owners in coming to the rescue at the eleventh hour—very much so in some cases—hundreds of children who needed admission to primary schools for the first time would not have been able to gain entry into any school unless their parents were prepared to send them long distances at considerable expense and at considerable anxiety for their safety.
I am afraid that there is a great lack of anticipation and of planning in relation to schools generally in an expanding area like County Dublin. There should be better liaison between the local authorities, the school managers and the vocational education authorities so that there would be a continuous survey in relation to population trends and the general need for educational facilities. I know that in many parts of rural Ireland the shoe is on the other foot—schools are emptying. Here we have not sufficient schools and the need for them is becoming a greater problem every day. It is extremely important that that problem be dealt with urgently. Even the schools we have are suffering from quite a degree of overcrowding.
No matter what the Minister may say about the supply of teachers, I submit it is totally inadequate. It has been said repeatedly that we have reached the stage where we have no class of more than 50 pupils. I ask the Minister to check that up because I personally do not believe it. As well as that, I still hold it is an impossibility for a teacher adequately to educate young children when there are 50 in the class. I do not believe—I do not say this lightly—that we have anything like classes of 50 with a fully trained teacher in charge all the time. There are many instances of teachers being absent for unavoidable reasons of one sort or another. There is no replacement and the children are just being minded, but not taught in the schools. That is no reflection at all on the teachers. They are an excellent body of people. I believe the whole trouble is that they are not coming up in sufficient numbers and are not available in sufficient numbers.
I know an effort is being made all the time to provide additional teachers. The demand for them is increasing all the time. I am not quite clear what exactly is the problem, whether it is that we have insufficient accommodation in the training schools, or whether it is we have not sufficient trainees coming up. If the problem is a question of accommodation, there should be a far greater effort made to provide suitable accommodation for the training of teachers because it is a definite and obvious loss to children, and something which they never catch up on, if they are in classes with too great a number of children, especially if they are not particularly bright children.
I always feel that, if anything, there is too much concern for the brilliant child and not enough concern for the backward child. The parents who are unfortunate enough to have a child who is inclined to be backward have a very big burden. The unfortunate child himself finds it difficult to make his way in the world. I have heard this sort of reference from time to time "for all children who can benefit". Will anybody show me the child who cannot benefit? It is a quite wrong reference to make or to use. When you say "for all children who can benefit" that includes every child. It includes even mentally handicapped children. They, too, can benefit. Therefore, it is a completely wrong phrase to use.
I spoke about the necessity for anticipating educational needs, the need for making a survey and for keeping that survey continuously under review. We, in County Dublin, who are members of the Vocational Education Committee, got a survey made about six months ago because we were anxious to build a number of extra vocational schools in County Dublin. The need is there and we wanted to supply the need.
It is deplorable, in a county where we hope to expand industrially and where the whole standard of living of the people in the county depends on industrial expansion and increased exports, and where they in turn depend on the technical skill and ability of the people who are going to operate these industries, that we are not as concerned as we should be to ensure that every area is fully supplied with vocational educational facilities. We have been unable to get any reply from the Department so far as to what is their reaction to that survey. The survey is sufficiently long with the Department for them to be able to say: "If we are to provide the facilities that should be provided you must have a school there, there and there and in the long term, schools so-and-so elsewhere."
We have one obvious area that is in existence for very many years. There is a teeming population there. This area, which is on the fringe of a highly industrialised area, is in Crumlin-Walkinstown. There is no school there. We went to a lot of trouble, of course, late in the day, to look for a site. That is always the difficulty in an area which is built. A community is formed and then we find that there is no central situation and no possible site for a school. Eventually, through, let me say, the generosity of a developer there, we got a suitable site but there is some difficulty with the landlord in relation to building a school on that site. We need to use compulsory powers in order to get that site.
I took this matter up with the Minister's predecessor and for some reason, at that time, he was not satisfied that it was necessary to proceed along those lines in order to secure the site. I would like to tell the Minister, and impress upon him, if we are to get sites in most of the areas, where the need is greatest in County Dublin, we will only be able to get those sites by compulsory purchase order. If we are denied those powers we will have no schools in those areas. I would like the Minister to appreciate that fact. We have the power and we should be allowed to use it as soon as possible. Otherwise we will be falling far behind, as we are at the moment, in providing vocational needs for the people whom we are expected to look after in those areas.
Whenever we place a proposal before the Department, the officers of the Department are very attentive to it. I know we had a case where it took us approximately three years from the time we submitted plans to the time we could say we could go ahead and build a school. That happened in Clondalkin and by the time we were ready to start building we found the school was only half big enough. This has been the practice all over the area. The question of economising in the size of schools is really deplorable.
We built a primary school in Clondalkin and, in spite of the fact that I had been with the Minister on a number of occasions to increase the size of the school—I know the school manager comes into this as well—and impress upon him the rapid rate of development taking place there and that the school was ridiculously small —there was deplorable overcrowding in that school—a year later we had to come to the aid of the school with a rush-up prefab in order to accommodate the children. This practice is repeated in almost every area in County Dublin.
There is no foresight in regard to the building of schools. The cost of building has enormously increased. Every year building costs are rocketing. Prices are increasing all the time. There is a lack of planning, foresight and liaison among the people who have the responsibility for providing educational facilities for the people. An effort should be made, in planning a community, to ensure that public buildings, such as schools, health centres, recreation centres, libraries and all other facilities should be the centre of the community. In many cases it would assist mothers who were taking children of tender years, perhaps, one to school and another to the health centre on the same morning, if they were close by. It would also be a great help from the point of view of school medical examinations if we had the health centres close to the primary schools. The examinations could go on without disrupting the work of the school.
I rose mainly to make those few comments in relation to the difficulties we are experiencing in County Dublin, and that are pretty general also, and to ask the Minister to pay some attention to them. I do not intend to speak in a general way because I know that if we are to leave this House tonight, we will have to curtail ourselves in the contributions we make.
