The House will now hear two-minute statements on matters appropriate to the Minister for Education. I propose to call the Deputies selected in the following manner: Deputy Jimmy Deenihan, two statements; Deputy Pádraic McCormack; Deputy Michael Finucane and Deputy Paul Bradford.
Adjournment Debate. - Education Matters.
Tarbert comprehensive school was opened in 1974. It was then designed to accommodate 520 pupils. However it has since grown to a 670 pupil school. An extension was approved by the Department of Education in 1975-76. However, whereas this overcame the overcrowding problem somewhat, the problem still remains for certain practical subjects. Since 1974 the school has used the same facilities for technical drawing, engineering and building construction. To facilitate all students who require these subjects it is essential that there are two rooms for each of the above subjects, one for junior cycle and one for senior cycle. As this is a very progressive school I would implore the Minister to treat the application as sympathetically as possible.
In regard to Ballybunion convent, the board of management had to go ahead with essential works, including the replacement of windows and other essential repairs. Again, I would like to ask the Minister to treat their application as sympathetically as possible. In the past the teachers there have proven to be very hard working and very committed to their school. As a result the school has grown out of all proportions and is supplying a very good service.
One would need to have the precision of Olympic Games timekeepers, but do I take it that you have moved on to your school question?
Yes.
The modus operandi is that the Minister replies to the first question before putting the second one. Could we have the Minister's reply to the first question?
I agree with Deputy Deenihan that Tarbert is a progressive school with progressive teachers and I am glad that he raised this matter. He is quite right, there was an extension in the years 1985-86 but it did not allow for the full growth of the school. We are at present examining the developed sketch scheme for the project and, when this stage has been passed, the detailed design will then have to be submitted and examined. It allows for the two technical rooms of which the Deputy spoke and other ancillary accommodation and classrooms. The need will be in the medium to long term to cater for 625 to 650 pupils but when the additional work is done I will be reviewing the matter. I should certainly like to get the work started when all the planning stages are completed.
As the Minister knows, the windows in Ballybunion convent have been replaced and other essential works had to be carried out. In the past the authorities were very effective and are serving the area very well educationally. I appeal to the Minister to treat this application as sympathetically as possible as the board of management and the authorities are hard pressed for funds. They find it very difficult to maintain their school in a proper fashion because it is in a very exposed area with the Atlantic winds blowing over it. I ask the Minister to treat this as a special case.
I thank Deputy Deenihan for putting his case so well, indeed he serves his area well. As he knows, the school have transgressed the rules; they sent in a report on the need for the work and we immediately wrote back telling them to send the details. Subsequently, we discovered that work to the value of £8,300 had been done without permission. The system of retrospective grants has been abolished for some time. What has been prepared for me contains a vehement "no" but in view of the case put forward by Deputy Deenihan and because of the work done by the good sisters who look after educational interests so well in that area, I will give the matter further consideration.
I sincerely thank the Minister for being so kind and charitable. She is definitely my favourite Minister.
There is only one of me; it would not be hard to be the Deputy's favourite.
The perfumes of Arabia have sweetened his little hand. Perhaps Deputy McCormack will now make his statement.
It will be in continuation of the spirit of the debate up to now. Snipe Avenue School, Newcastle, Galway city, for mentally handicapped children consists of eight or nine prefab buildings catering for 90 pupils from Galway city and county. Some of those buildings are 25 years old and are leaking very badly. It makes it impossible for teachers and pupils to operate efficiently.
A campaign has been conducted by the Galway Association for Mentally Handicapped to have a new school erected on the site. In March 1989 there was a great breakthrough when the Minister — and indeed the Minister of State, Deputy Frank Fahey — came down to the school and in a fanfare of public relations announced sanction for the building of a new school. That was before the last general election and now, over two years later, despite the full co-operation of the promoters, we cannot find out if, and when, this school will start. Are they waiting for another election? Are the Minister, and the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, using the pupils of this school as pawns in their games? The school was supposed to go to tender last December and on 21 January I put down a Dáil question to the Minister in this regard. I was assured there would be a decision in relation to this matter in three weeks but three months later I am still trying to establish the position.
The Minister and the Government are treating mentally handicapped children and their parents as second-class citizens and, as Fine Gael spokesman on mentally handicapped and special education, I will not stand for it. Why did the Government cut the budget to the Galway Association for Mentally Handicapped by £500,000? How can the association run the service with this treatment? It is not good enough.
The Minister of State also proposes to close the school for mentally handicapped children at the Brothers of Charity, Renmore. Let him attack the people who can defend themselves and leave the underprivileged alone. The people of Galway are watching him. The Minister and the Government have no regard for the underprivileged and they will pay the price. I am now asking the Minister, once and for all, to clearly spell out when the school for mentally handicapped at Snipe Avenue will get the go-ahead after several false promises over the last two years.
The case has been trenchantly put but with many errors and misconceptions. The Minister of State, Deputy Frank Fahey, spent of lot of time and effort in attending in great detail to the whole issue of services for the handicapped in Galway city and county and indeed throughout the country.
I cannot allow the false and spurious allegations by Deputy McCormack in regard to the Government's commitment to the handicapped to go unchallenged. We have attended to our duties with a great sense of devotion and dedication. I have been in Snipe Avenue and I did not bring any PR as I do my own. I am sure the same applies to the Minister of State. I met the parents on five occasions, indeed I met them last Saturday at my home, and I very much share their hopes and wishes that the school at Snipe Avenue, which for many years in the eighties was totally neglected, will soon come to fruition. When we came to office there was no planning process in relation to this school and there was no thought for the future of these children. The present position is that the tender documents are practically completed, including the bills of quantities, but some structural drawings for the roof and foundations need to be prepared before the project is fully ready for tender. I have arranged that the remaining documents will be completed with the minimum of delay and then we will proceed with the invitation to tender.
I know the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, would like to have been here tonight as the question dealt with his constituency and his special interest. He is on Government business but I am very glad to reverse the position, so to speak, and to stand in for him. I assure the Deputy that it is his care and dedication which has led to the school reaching this point of preparedness.
I have lán mór to say.
There is no lán mór for you, Deputy, your time is up. I now call on Deputy Finucane.
What about the mentally handicapped people in Galway?
Is the Deputy running in the local elections?
I am.
The combined schools in Kildimo, Pallaskenry and Kilcoran have a roll of over 547 pupils, 90 of whom are in need of remedial teaching. Requests have been made to successive Governments since 1980 from the school for a remedial teacher for the three schools combined. Part of their difficulty is that neighbouring schools in other centres had the benefit of remedial teachers and indeed one of the schools — Kildimo — lost quite a few pupils to a neighbouring school which had that facility. In the review which I think will take place again this year will the Minister favourably consider the application which I know is on her file from those three combined schools and possibly consider appointing a remedial teacher?
There are, as Deputy Finucane knows, approximately 3,500 primary schools in the country, of which 1,100 have the services of a remedial teacher or share one. There are 900 remedial teachers in the primary educational system so that means that over 2,000 applications are on hand. This coming September we will be appointing 80 remedial teachers which, combined with the 30 we apportioned last year, is more in two years than in the combined four years previously — and I do not say this in a party political way. It does mean that it is on a scale of priorities that these teachers will be appointed. Many Deputies write to me and put down questions about the appointment of remedial teachers. Obviously I would not have the specific knowledge of each school that makes an application. We depend on the skills of our divisional and district inspectors who make the visits when the application is received, make assessments of the pupils and submit those to the deputy head inspector who puts them in the order of priority. I want to make this clear because I happened, by accident, to read in a particular local paper that a certain Deputy claimed that these were appointed politically. I receive the professional advice of my inspectors and I go along with it exactly because I would not have the specific knowledge of each pupil's ability, or perhaps slight disability, and would therefore not be able to make my own judgment on it.
I am assured that all of the applications which have been made, and which would include the Deputy's case, will be examined in the assessment procedure and arranged in the order of priority. I hope it will be possible to facilitate the Deputy.
I hope the Minister will continue in the same generous vein and finally bring to an end the long-running saga of the proposed extension to the Patrician Academy school in Mallow.
The Minister is by now fully aware of the failure of her Department to announce a start-up date for the extension to this school. It is causing grave concern to the parents of the area, to the school management, but most of all to the 450 pupils in the Patrician Academy. The Minister is also fully aware that the present building complex has been condemned by the fire and safety officers. There is a danger that unless the extension goes ahead in the very near future the situation may arise that the school authorities will have no option but to close the school, such is its present condition.
We were very pleased last April when the Minister personally visited the school and saw for herself the appalling conditions under which the teachers work and the pupils learn. We were very glad that shortly afterwards an announcement was made that an extension would be sanctioned. The project was allowed go to tender in December 1990. Particulars were received in the Minister's Department in February 1991 but unfortunately nothing has happened since then and nothing has been heard by the school authorities. We are informed that this is a most unusual delay and it is causing great concern to the school authorities and to the parents.
In response to a written Dáil Question I was told by the Minister that the school authorities were meeting with senior officials of her Department today to discuss the matter further. Unfortunately, whilst that meeting did go ahead, the basic difficulty as to the start-up date of the project was not really addressed and the school authorities are still waiting to be informed when the building will go ahead.
My brief demands are that the Minister would give an absolute commitment that the project will go ahead in 1991, that the Minister will indicate that the money is available in her Department for the project and, most important, that she will be able to state here tonight when the project will go ahead and hopefully that it will go ahead before the summer.
I look forward with great anticipation to a positive reply which will bring to an end this long running saga that I discussed with the Minister while I was a Senator, that I discussed on Cork County Council, and that I am now bringing before Dáil Éireann. I appeal to the Minister to send me home with the sort of goods news that she gave to Deputy Deenihan, and I can assure her that her popularity will increase dramatically in the Mallow area.
There are no votes for me in Cork.
The Minister has many admirers down there.
I do not know when all this sweetness is going to end.
(Interruptions.)
I will have to bring this House to order and put an end to this mental massaging. It is not in order.
I would like to thank Deputy Bradford for bringing forward the case. It is true that I visited the school without any PR people in tow. I was most courteously received and enjoyed my visit greatly. The preliminary report was received in my Department only last February and two months for consideration in any Government Department is very brisk. The wonder is why the matter took so long in the intervening period, but that would be for Mallow, not for Marlborough Street. The report has now been examined. The next stage is to request the final tender report and I have asked for that today. As Deputy Bradford knows, Deputy Ned O'Keeffe and Deputy Michael Ahern have been most persistent in following up this case also.
And Deputy Joe Sherlock.
Deputy Bradford has asked me if I have an absolute commitment to this school and I am glad to send him home to bed happy by telling him that I have an absolute commitment to this school and that building will commence in 1991.
The Dáil adjourned at 9.20 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 24 April 1991.