Scoil Íosa is also called Malahide community school and, apart from the fact that it is in my constituency, nationally it is a particularly special school. Its size is phenomenal, being the third largest community school in the country, but it also provides facilities for a wide range of abilities. It has the only follow-on facilities for children with special needs in that area. The largest ACLD, dyslexia and remedial units in the country are depending on Scoil Íosa for children going from primary to second level. There is significant demand for places there and it is not easy to find alternative accommodation.
Unfortunately, the capital investment programme for 2003 has halted the progress being made towards a larger replacement building for Scoil Íosa. I am begging the Minister of State to give this school the go ahead at the quarterly review stage, or before then. I know I will be joined by many others in making this request. The Minister of State should take into account the chronic difficulties that are being caused by having to tell over 43 applicant pupils that have been granted places, that those places will now be withdrawn. The importance of the replacement building was recognised by the previous Ministers for Education and Science, Deputies Martin and Woods. I hope the current Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, will recognise the work as being urgent.
The situation is tragic for those affected, particularly for families where a child may be moving on from primary level, yet cannot now join his or her brother or sister in the secondary school. In case the Minister of State suggests providing pre-fabricated classrooms, the current facilities are so dilapidated that a number of pupils cannot use the toilets. The school building is generally dilapidated. They are people with chronic special needs. I spoke today to the mother of a boy who is dyslexic. He is in an excellent local ACLD unit but if he does not get a place in the Malahide community school she said she may as well send him to Trinity College because he would be completely at sea without the support facilities for a child with special needs. He is being told that he cannot have a place. His parents are frantic with worry and are in a desperate situation. They will either have to pay for grinds or stay up late at night trying to help him. They will have no quality of life. That is the situation facing many pupils who are affected by this freeze. I ask that the situation be reviewed in particular cases where there is a clear humanitarian as well as educational need.
I am aware of another case where the medical situation of the parents themselves is so difficult that they cannot travel or bring their children to another school and it is not possible for the children to be sent to another school. I hope this matter can be resolved without the country getting itself into further hot water. The Government has had to face parents in the courts because constitutional entitlements to education were being denied to their children. Children with special needs are being victimised most particularly. They are the very children who perhaps come from a disadvantaged background and are then told that they should go to a grind school for their education. Instead of facing up to that basic inequality this decision accentuates the inequality. Those children that can go to the secondary school down the road which does not have special needs facilities will do so but children with special needs who cannot go anywhere—
