Deputy Belton gave notice of his intention to raise on the adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 30 of 17th February, 1971.
Private Members' Business. - Adjournment Debate: Dublin School Accommodation.
At the outset I should like to say that I did not ask for this question on the adjournment for any political motive — I did it because the area concerned is in urgent need of schools. The area lies between the Malahide Road, Collins Avenue and the Belfast road. There are approximately 16,000 houses in the area. Contrary to a remark made recently by a Fianna Fáil Deputy this was not built-up in the last two years; it has been built during the last ten or 12 years. Therefore the Government had plenty of time to be aware of the position and to take the necessary steps to provide adequate schools.
This could apply to any newly builtup area. One could take as an example the Tallaght area which is beginning to give some trouble from the Minister's point of view, as regards schools and the same position will probably obtain eventually in Blanchardstown. Beside the Kilmore West area is Bonnybrook and the same trouble exists there in that a dual system of schooling is in operation. This means that children study from 9 a.m. to 12 mid-day; the teacher and the children leave the classroom and another group of children arrive to work from 12.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. The children are being half-educated at a time when they should receive a full day's schooling. This is particularly applicable to children who may not continue their education after the age of 14 years. In the case of Bonnybrook I attended about ten meetings with Fianna Fáil, Labour and Fine Gael Deputies. Eventually after much effort by the teachers, the clergy, the residents and the public representatives we managed to get nine rooms from the Minister's Department. I fault the Government for their total lack of interest in this connexion.
In a ten-year period the corporation plan an area. Some parts may be completed more quickly than others but generally they know what will happen in a five- or ten-year period. This knowledge should be in the hands of all Government Departments. In the case of the Cromcastle/Kilmore West area I shall give a few examples of what has annoyed residents. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs have not provided a post office. There is only a caravan available; people have to queue for children's allowances and for old age pensions and it is impossible to lodge money. People lodge money with some society for which they have to pay a sum of 30s fee which makes a dent in the few pounds they have to lodge. At the moment if people wish to use the post office facilities they have to queue outside the caravan at 8.40 a.m. and frequently there are 100 people waiting. There are insufficient police in the area; there is a shortage of library and health services and of many other amenities. I mention these facts to show that the residents have justification for their annoyance.
When they wish to send their children to school they find that schools are not available. At this stage they begin to realise that Corporation tenants are treated like second-class citizens. In the area to which I have referred there are no secondary schools and there are no plans for their provision to my knowledge. In 80 per cent of cases parents had to have three or four children before they got houses; therefore the number of children involved was easy to calculate. I know many children will go to technical schools because their fathers were tradesmen and they may wish to follow the same trade but others will wish to obtain a secondary education in order to become teachers and so on. The figures I will give to the Minister will show that there will not be sufficient primary schools, never mind secondary schools.
In Bonnybrook there are 1,500 houses. New houses are being built on the Oscar Traynor Road; there are some 2,000-3,000 houses between Kilmore and Beaumont. I was in one of these prefabricated houses in Coolock and I should like the Minister to come and visit there. The prefab is economical and I can understand the Minister's wish to save money. In the building I visited there were eight classrooms built round a general purposes room, which is used as two classrooms. It is necessary to pass through the general purposes room, which has one exit. If a fire should occur on that premises it is impossible to visualise 450 children being able to leave the premises safely. In a rush for the single door very many would be killed.
I shall outline briefly the dual-day system. A mother brings one child to school at 9 a.m. and she collects the child at 12 o'clock; she must take a second child to school at 12.30 p.m. and return at 3.30 p.m. to collect the child. It means that the mother's entire day is taken up with travelling to and from the school and she finds it impossible even to prepare meals. In this area many women work to supplement the family income — in fact, an American factory has been looking for women employees. It is impossible for the women to take up employment because their entire day is occupied in taking their children to school.
Some 1,150 children are attending schools outside the area; they go to the O'Connell Schools, schools in Clontarf and Fairview and at William Street. I admit that some of these children continue through choice their education in these schools but this does not apply to the total number. Some of the pupils are attending schools at Inchicore and Rathfarnham, which must be 14 miles away. A recent survey carried out by the residents shows that there are 4,600 children in Kilmore West area; 3,450 are school-going and 1,150 are coming up for education within the next three years. Some 1,300 are attending school on Cromcastle Green, Kilmore West; 600 are attending Saint David's and St. John of God's secondary schools— approximately 300 in each.
There are 1,150 children attending 21 schools outside this area, and I mean outside this area. Assuming that 300 boys and 250 girls, giving a total of 550 children, leave the prefabricated buildings in Cromcastle next July, that leaves vacancies for 90 pupils in an area where there are 128 new flats, 200 new houses in Kilmore Park Estate, 800 new houses in the Ardmore Estate, and of that 800 there are at least 200 already occupied. In the region between there and Beaumont there are another 3,000 houses going up, and there is no school for boys in Beaumont. The Minister told me that a new school under construction there would be ready by the 1st September. It will not be ready by then. It may be ready on the 1st January or some time next Spring, but even if it is, it will be the same type of school as in the other place, a fire hazard. It is a two-storey building but I assume the design will be the same. There are 14 classrooms and two general purpose rooms which will be used as classrooms. That will give accommodation for 640 with 40 pupils per class. You may squeeze in 45 or 50 as in the case of other schools but the recommended number is 40 and no more than 40.
Where will all the necessary school accommodation come from? As regards primary schools there is none for Kilmore West or Bonnybrook. There are 1,500 houses in Bonnybrook; I may be wrong within 100 or 200 because it is a very big scheme. There is no secondary school either. There is no use in the Minister telling me there is a secondary school close by. There is not. People living in Raheny must send their children to Sandymount for secondary education. If they live in Harmonstown the children must go across the city, anywhere they can get in. Saint Joseph's will not take them nor will any of the other schools around take them. Do I take it from the Minister he intends these children to go to a technical school and that they will have no choice of a proper secondary education? In any case the technical school in that area would be overloaded. The accommodation there is not adequate at all. In the immediate vicinity there are 6,000 houses and no provision for a secondary school. There is no secondary school for boys in Beaumont which contains another 1,600 or 1,700 houses.
If schools were constructed in these areas they would not go to waste because from Bonnybrook out towards the Airport, along the backroad towards the Coachman's Inn the corporation have bought thousands of acres of land. Some of it is for industrial or commercial sites but there is 1,000 acres there and at 12 houses per acre there would be 12,000 houses built so that schools would not go to waste. One must remember that over the last ten years this was the sole area in Dublin, except for small pockets, where there was a corporation scheme going on all the time, with the exclusion of that rushed job in Ballymun which is no credit to anyone and people do not want to stay in it.
I am telling the Minister that schools are not there. I do not mind if the Minister says there is no money and that they will be built within a certain time. I know there is vast expenditure involved. I do not want to make political capital out of this but I do not want to be told something is going to be done when I know it cannot be done the way the Minister is proceeding at the moment.
If pupils cannot be accommodated locally surely there should be a free bus service to a group of schools like O'Connell's, St. Canice's, William Street and Fairview, which are practically together and where the majority of the children in the areas I have mentioned go; some of them go to Clontarf. I can give the Minister an example of a woman who sends two or three children to Fairview School and it costs 40s per week out of her income. It could save a great deal of industrial strife in regard to the demand for wages if such people could be saved that amount of money by being able to send their children to schools in their own area.
The Minister may know the area by looking at the map, and I am sure he is well briefed on it by his staff. However, I would like the Minister to visit the area, not necessarily with me or any other politician but with somebody from the area, who would show him the problem from the residents' point of view. They may exaggerate slightly, but there is no secondary school in that area at the moment and I have heard of no plans for a secondary school. There are two secondary schools adjoining the area but they cater for the residents of the privately-built houses which were there originally. Pupils must do an examination to get into Chanel College. It is the same situation in regard to Belcamp, St. Paul's or St. Joseph's, which are the secondary schools in that area of North-east and North-central Dublin in which there must be at least 150,000 people.
I have brought this matter up not for any political motive and not to attack the Minister personally. I do not want to blame the Department either. This area is crying out for education. What I want is to get some kind of promise from the Minister to the people of the Kilmore/Bonnybrook Estates that secondary schools will be provided, say, within three or three and a half years. That would satisfy them to some extent. At the moment there are no schools and they are being told nothing. There is no guarantee and the situation will end up, as in the Bonnybrook case, with the priests breathing down the necks of public representatives to approach the Minister to get money from the Minister for Finance for the provision of schools. The Minister should come in person to see the area.
I cannot accept the estimation of the situation as made by Deputy Belton.
I will deal first with primary educcation in the Cromcastle-Kilmore area. I had hoped to have sufficient accommodation available in the new schools for boys and girls which are at present being built in the Cromcastle-Kilmore area by September, 1971, so that the dual day system which entails a shorter school day for infant pupils could be ended. I might add that this dual day system is a common enough system on the Continent. In fact, while the infants do not have as long a period as normal in school, nevertheless, it is very little short of the normal. I recognise, of course, that there is a problem in the fact that parents have to bring some of the children to school in the morning and others in the evening. However, as only portion of the new buildings will be erected by the date on which we had hoped to have had the schools open, arrangements are being made to transfer from a nearby school a number of prefabricated classrooms which will shortly become surplus at that school, so that all the primary school children may be on a full day's schooling as from September, 1971.
What school?
The Deputy has referred to the fire hazards in these prefabricated schools but I am sure he must accept that our schools have to comply with the regulations of Dublin Corporation. The question of the schools for the Kilmore area was considered some years ago. As this and the Bonnybrook area were then in the same parish, the parish priest decided that, because Bonnybrook was developing at a much faster rate than Kilmore, he would build the schools in Bonnybrook first. An application was received from the present manager of the Kilmore area in 1968 and it was decided to erect new schools there.
I will now give some particulars of these schools. First, we have a boys' school to be conducted by the Irish Christian Brothers. There will be 16 classrooms in that school and later there will be 18 classrooms. Secondly, we have a girls' school to be conducted by the Sisters of St. John of God with 16 classrooms plus a cookery room. Thirdly, we will have the Kilmore Road boys' school which will be staffed by lay teachers and will have 16 classrooms. Fourthly, there will be the Kilmore Road girls' school which will be staffed by lay teachers and will have 16 classrooms. Grants have been sanctioned for the erection of all of these schools.
The girls' school which will be conducted by the Sisters of St. John of God is nearing completion. The two schools to be staffed by lay staff are in course of erection and are due for completion by April, 1972. Four classrooms in each of these schools are expected to be available by next September. Pending the erection of the new permanent buildings, prefabricated buildings were provided in each case. In this area there is also a prefabricated school for juniors in Ardlea Road. This was erected in 1967. The total number of prefabricated classrooms available in the area is 60.
What about the school in Marino?
Would the Deputy mind giving me an opportunity to reply?
Why not be honest about it?
The dual day situation is in the Cromcastle Green/Kilmore, schools and this is where the problem is. I understand that by the end of the school year the new convent school, St. John of God's, will be completed and there will be 12 spare prefabricated classrooms which will then be made available in that area and this will put an end to the dual day system.
In relation to the Bonnybrook/Kilmore/Cromcastle area I am informed that there is spare accommodation available in national schools in the neighbouring parish. In the St. Brendan's boys' school there are about 340 places and in St. Catherine's girls' and infants's school there are about 90 places. These schools are only half a mile away. The fact that parents send their children to schools outside these areas does not carry with it a right to free transport. These are very close to the area in question.
As I explained to the Deputy already the post-primary educational needs of these areas are already being met by four secondary schools and one vocational school. I should like the Deputy to recognise that I am concerned with post-primary education. We never said at any time that there would be sufficient places in all the secondary schools for those who wish to go to secondary schools. We did say that there would be a place in a post-primary school for every child who wanted post-primary education.
In Chanel College in Coolock there is accommodation for 400 pupils. It is intended to increase this to cater for 600 pupils. The new Christian Brothers school at Kilmore Road is being built. Accommodation has already been provided there for 200 pupils and when the project is completed there will be accommodation for 720 pupils. A boys' vocational school, a junior cycle, has been built in the Coolock/Kilmore area and it will accommodate 720 pupils. Senior cycle accommodation will be provided there at a later stage. For girls we have the Virgo Clemens school which was recently completed and will accommodate 450 girls. A new school to be operated by the Sisters of St. John of God has been sanctioned. The accommodation will be provided in stages. In the meantime, the school is being operated in prefabricated classrooms. A new vocational school for 720 girls is planned and will eventually be built on the same site as the site for the boys' vocational school.
In 1990?
I met a deputation from the Kilmore Tenants' Association some time ago to discuss primary and post-primary education in the area. I agreed at that time to ask the Dublin Advisory Council to re-examine the post-primary accommodation needs of the area. This is an advisory council for post-primary schools in Dublin and it comprises representatives of the school managers of vocational education committees, of teachers' organisations, and the Department. It makes an assessment of the needs of each area and the Department are guided to a very large extent by the advice of the committee when making provision for postprimary education.
As I said, I agreed to ask the Dublin Advisory Council to re-examine the situation here in relation to the post-primary accommodation needs. This was done and at their next meeting the advisory committee examined the whole situation and it was agreed that the plans already prepared for that area met the situation. In all, about 4,000 places in post-primary schools will be provided within that area. This number will fully cater for the needs of that area. I have already told the Deputy the number of schools that are completed, the number of schools that are being built, the number of extensions that are being prepared, and I have explained to him that, on the advice of this Dublin Advisory Council, which advise me in relation to the number of places needed in any area in the city, the accommodation we are making available for post-primary education is sufficient. The Deputy can be assured that this accommodation will be made available and that it will be sufficient to meet the needs of the area.
It is not sufficient and the residents know it.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 24th February, 1971.