With your permission, Sir, I wish to share my time with Deputy Kirk.
Adjournment Debate. - Killanny (Monaghan) School.
I am sure that is satisfactory.
I regret the Minister is not in the House to hear about this very important issue. We are calling on the Minister to provide funds for the replacement of Ballymackney school outside Carrickmacross. The present school was built in 1847. It is hardly necessary to outline the condition of a school built during the famine. The school has three classrooms, to which a prefab was added in 1979. There are two toilets in the school, one for girls and one for boys, which are shared with the teachers. The school has been condemned by the public health medical officer on the basis of insufficient space per child, inadequate toilets, only one tap supplying drinking water located in the yard and the school's general condition. The play area is totally inadequate. Also the school happens to be on the Dundalk-Cavan road, a very dangerous road, which the children have to cross to go to the playground. One small room is used as a staff room, for meetings and also by the remedial teacher. That room is badly placed in that it is beside the toilet facilities. Also the school furniture is antiquated.
In 1977, 130 years after the school was built, the other school in the parish was closed down. At that time it was decided that a central school should be built to replace both schools. At present 116 children attended the school. A site was purchased and in 1988 the present parish priest, Fr. O'Reilly, completed the formalities and the necessary funds were raised by the people. When I was Minister for Health, my colleague, the then Minister for Education, Deputy Mary O'Rourke, met parent deputations and ensured that the school progressed to the stage were everything is ready except funding from the Department.
Planning permission, which was again applied for in 1992, was granted. Naturally, the parents are very frustrated because they do not have their school. I am calling on the Minister for Education to provide funding in 1994 to ensure the building of this school commences. Under the National Development Plan funding should be available in 1994. I thank the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Deputy Stagg, for coming in to take the Adjournment Debate. I would ask him to impress upon his colleague, the Minister for Education, the need to have this school built as rapidly as possible.
It gives me great pleasure to join my colleague in Cavan-Monaghan, Deputy O'Hanlon, in urging the Minister for Education to provide adequate finance in the 1994 Estimate to have the Greenfield primary school project for Killanny parish underway in the coming year. As he has outlined, it is a very urgent project as the present school is one of the oldest in the country. Its location along the Dundalk-Cavan road or the Dundalk-Carrickmacross road means it is dangerous. As in the case with many other schools where building projects are in the pipeline, we have prefabricated accommodation which is inadequate and unsatisfactory. The parents, teachers and pupils involved have been very patient in the past but they are now very anxious to get the project underway. I urge the Minister for Education to endeavour to have this project included in the 1994 building programme. I know the Minister for State, Deputy Emmet Stagg, who is standing in for the Minister this evening will impress our views on her.
I am sure both Deputy O'Hanlon and Deputy Kirk will appreciate that the reason the Minister is not present is that she is attending the Education Convention.
I am glad of the opportunity which the Deputies have presented me with to clarify the position in relation to this matter. This is a four teacher school which had an enrolment of 120 pupils in September 1992. The existing accommodation consists of three permanent classrooms and a prefab classroom.
The Department has approved the provision of a new school to replace the existing unsatisfactory building. The total estimated grant-aid for this project will amount to £165,000. The architectural planning of the new school is at an advanced stage and planning permission has been received from the local authority.
As the Deputies will appreciate, every school invariably makes the case that its project is deserving of special consideration. The Department of Education would be more than delighted if, in a world where resources were unlimited, every scheme could proceed at the same time. However, as the Deputies will be aware, because of the large volume of major building projects on hands and the limitations on resources, it is possible to allow only a certain number of projects to proceed to construction in any one financial year. Unfortunately it was not possible to include this project in the national schools capital programme for 1993.
The Department of Education is well aware that conditions at the existing school are far from satisfactory and that the existing permanent accommodation dates from the middle of the last century. I am also aware that the school authorities have been pressing for a new school for a number of years and that a previous building scheme had to be abandoned in 1987 due to the difficult financial situation at that time. Therefore I wish to assure the Deputies that the Department accepts that this is a project deserving of the highest priority in the context of projects to be allowed to proceed to construction in 1994.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 27 October 1993.