I want to thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for having allowed me the opportunity to raise this important matter on behalf of so many people in my constituency. It is generally accepted on all sides of the House that the new towns on the west side of Dublin have been disgracefully under-provided for in terms of resources. However, citizens in many parts of Tallaght, for example, have thrived despite official neglect and, through their tenacity and persistence over the years, have gradually shaped vigorous, forward-looking communities.
In the case of Kingswood and Kilnamanagh the capacity of the people to realise their full potential, to consolidate an indigenous community spirit is being hampered and obstructed by the scandalous failure of successive Governments, over ten years, to provide the area with a second-level school. Towards the end of the seventies, and especially throughout the eighties, parents in this enormously populous area have had to make arrangements to bus their children to several outside schools.
I should like to avail of this opportunity to put the refusal to build this second-level school at Kilnamanagh/Kingswood in Tallaght in the context of the huge population of that area where there are more than 3,000 houses and a population of almost 20,000. Where in Ireland is there a town of almost 20,000 people, with more than 3,000 primary-level school children in the care of 80 primary teachers, without a second-level school? Up to 1,000 children per day will have to be bussed out of Kilnamanagh/Kingswood to 17 outside schools if this second-level school is not built. Let us put that in the context of a town like Tralee with a population of 16,495, or Clonmel — as the Ceann Comhairle will know — with a population in excess of 12,000. One may well ask how many second-level schools are there in the Clonmel area? If one compares the population of, say, Thurles, 7,059 or, say, Letterkenny, 6,691, then one can readily appreciate the enormity of the problem obtaining in Tallaght.
I am indeed sorry that the Minister herself is not present because I should like to have asked her about Athlone which has a population of 9,444. The area about which I speak has a population of almost 20,000, the majority of whom are at family-formation stage and where there is not a single second-level school. I should like to have had the opportunity to ask the Minister how many second-level schools there are in Athlone. I can recollect two readily. Are there more than two; say three or four, in an area with half the population of Kilnamanagh/Kingswood? This is a disgraceful position that cannot be allowed continue. Does the Minister appreciate those numbers? In the opinion of the Minister for Education do the children of Kilnamanagh/Kingswood have a lesser right to education than her constituents in Athlone? Does the Minister consider it proper that many parents in Kilnamanagh/Kingswood must bear additional transport costs compared with, say, her constituents in Athlone? Does the Minister consider that such a large community should be disrupted in this manner for so long?
I would like to refer to the fact that if this school was opened in 1990 there would immediately be 300 local children from the sixth grade available for enrolement in September. For every year thereafter for the five year cycle there would be an additional 300 new pupils, giving 1,500 pupils at the end of the five year cycle in that school. The people of the area are not looking for a school to cater for 1,500 pupils; they are looking for a school to cater for 800 pupils, which means that up to 700 children would still have to get buses out of Kilnamanagh-Kingswood. The statistics have been assembled by the local people, the families are young, and the projections are that there will be more than enough pupils to almost twice fill such an 800 pupil school.
I sometimes think that when the Minister glibly talks about other areas of Tallaght beginning to show signs of winding down demographically she knows nothing about the distances involved in a place like Tallaght. It is nonsense to suggest to over 3,000 householders in Kingswood-Kilnamanagh that they may in future have access to some places in a school five, six or seven miles away in another part of Tallaght.
Ever since the mid-seventies the Kilnamanagh-Kingswood area has been promised a second level school. The present Minister for Education espoused the cause of the local people when she was spokesperson on Education for Fianna Fáil. Eventually a commitment was extracted from the then Minister for Education, Mr. Paddy Cooney, to build a school at the end of the period of office of the 1983-87 Government. In 1987 Fianna Fáil were returned to office and the school was stopped despite the promises of the local Fianna Fáil organisation to the people in the area. Indeed the Minister protested — I had anticipated that she would be in the House but I did not want to embarrass her with quotations from her contribution — about the desperate need for the school during her time in Opposition.
The Minister for Education is not the only Minister who has betrayed the parents of Kilnamanagh-Kingswood on this issue. As recently as the debate of 7 December 1988, Deputy Mary Harney claimed that the Department had acquired two sites for the school and that design fees of up to £250,000 had been committed. She supported the cause of the local people and demanded that an announcement should be made soon. She warned that 1,000 children would have to get buses out of Kilnamanagh-Kingswood if the school was not built. Deputy Harney is now Minister in this Government but the children of Kilnamanagh-Kingswood still have not got their school and, even worse, they have to get buses in the early morning in the terrible conditions of smog that now exist in the Tallaght region. The Minister for smog is as ineffectual in tackling the smog problem as she was——
