Vol. 419 No. 7
1 Mr. J. Higgins asked the Minister for Education if he is prepared to respond positively to the request for a meeting from the parents association of Jobstown Community College, Dublin 24 to discuss the urgent accommodation problem at the school and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Since I became Minister for Education I have received numerous requests for deputations with regard to school building projects. Because I have extensive commitments relating to other Department work, I would be in a position to meet only a very limited number of these in any given week. However, I will contact the Deputy about this project at a later stage.
While appreciating that a Minister, particularly a new Minister, is invariably inundated with requests for meetings, I am sure the Minister must realise that Jobstown Community College has 422 students attending there at present, that it is literally bursting at the seams, that there are 200 additional applications for entry next September and that phase 2 of the building project is ready to go, but that it cannot go. In view of the fact that Jobstown is an area of high unemployment it is unfair to impose the hardship on those children of asking them to go to other schools outside their area. I ask the Minister to meet the parents as a matter of urgency.
I am not unsympathetic to the Deputy's point and I understand the needs of the area. On 8 June 1989 the Minister agreed to go ahead with the purchase of the site and new accommodation was provided there for a total enrolment of more than 400 pupils. A meeting was held on 14 April with the County Dublin Vocational Education Committee. They are now seeking an additional 12 to 14 new classrooms. The Deputy will understand that the problem I face is that Brookfield, which is only one mile away, has accommodation for 1,000 pupils. Despite that only 504 pupils have enrolled. I have asked the planning section of my Department to closely monitor enrolment at both primary and post primary level in Jobstown and Brookfield. It is only at examination stage but, given those figures, I cannot give a commitment today.
Will the Minister agree to meet the parents?
I will be happy to have some senior officials meet with them at this stage. I do not see much point in raising expectations. Since becoming Minister for Education I have tried to set my face against meeting deputations to take pressure off Deputies and to somehow pretend to the school that there was something the Minister had up his sleeve which, in fact, he had not. I do not wish to be discourteous. I will certainly arrange for senior officials to have a meeting with them immediately and I will consider the Deputy's request after that. I will not commit myself today because there is a school one mile away with a capacity for 1,000 and there are only 500 enrolled in it. The Department's professional analysis is that we could not commit ourselves to move any further than closely monitoring the enrolments. It is more honest to spell that out to the people than to delude them by pretending that a deputation to the Minister, with the equivalent number of pickets, can achieve the result, because it cannot.
