asked the Minister for Education whether he has yet decided what is to be done by way of providing adequate facilities for technical education in Buncrana, County Donegal.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Buncrana (Donegal) Technical Education.
34.
Mr. R. Burke
The provision of facilities for technical education in Buncrana, County Donegal, is being considered in the context of the future development of secondary education in the centre. I am not yet in a position to give a decision in the matter.
I take it that the Minister is fully aware of the extreme difficulties and the lack of facilities and accommodation that have existed in Buncrana for a considerable time. Is he aware that a contract was negotiated at one stage and was before the Department for sanction? We got that far and yet today we have not got one bit further. The difficulties are diabolical and no help has been forthcoming from the Department of Education in regard to technical education.
Mr. R. Burke
I am aware that there are two secondary schools in Buncrana, one managed by the County Donegal Vocational Education Committee and the other by the Sisters of Mercy. As in Ballyshannon and as in so many other areas, it is not a lack of appreciation of the difficulties by the Department that is causing the delay but the difficulty of arranging suitable school accommodation for the numbers of pupils in these particular centres. At the moment the number of pupils in the Bundoran secondary vocational school is 134 and I could not recommend in respect of that school that it should be rebuilt. I am taking steps to see if we can find some solution for the problems of Buncrana.
Is the Minister not aware that this is the sort of criterion that has been used by his Department to consolidate their own view at a given time? Is he aware that it would be impossible to have more than 134 pupils in the existing premises? Is he also aware that, since the date in 1965 when the contract documents were sent to the Department for sanction to build a new school at Ballyshannon, the adjoining secondary school was completely planned and built and is now in operation? How was there sanction for one and not for the other?
Mr. R. Burke
I do not feel called upon to justify that particular decision. All I can say is that we have provided mobile accommodation—two classrooms and toilets—in the vocational school this year. The problem is that both schools are seeking metalwork facilities and the total enrolment of the catchment area would not justify the duplication of these facilities. I would suggest that perhaps the solution here would be to bring representatives of both schools to meet me and to thrash out the whole problem and I am issuing an invitation to them to do that.
May I thank the Minister for that invitation which our vocational education committee will be very glad to accept and I am sure the secondary people will as well? Would he bear in mind that the situation as now seen in the Department should not be taken at its face value? He should go back a little bit. The inclusion of metalwork in a convent school side by side with a vocational school is surely a strange departure, to say the least of it.
Mr. R. Burke
Yes.