Mary Mother of Hope national school has been established in what is probably the fastest growing area of housing not just in this country but also in Europe. It is an area of Dublin 15 on the Meath border, beside Clonee village. Some 3,500 to 4,500 houses have been built over the past five or six years and the same amount are still under construction. A community of 5,000 houses is considerably bigger than the population of many large villages and medium sized towns. This area of Dublin 15 is designated by the Government as a high level development zone. Fingal County Council has facilitated this development by granting planning permission.
The Department of Education and Science has refused to have anything to do with the building of a permanent school. There is a temporary school in use which was opened after political pressure from myself and others. On the eve of the last local elections a sign was erected by the Department, the builder and Fianna Fáil which announced that the site was acquired. Subsequently and ironically I found out by means of the Freedom of Information Act that Menolly Properties were arranging to sell the site to the Department.
The school is facing an incredible crisis in the explosion of numbers, yet it is listed at level six of the Department's arrangements for the schools building programme. That means that the proposed project has proceeded to architectural planning but is effectively frozen until 2004 and after unless funding is provided.
How does the Minister expect parents in the area to cope? They are paying through the nose for their nice houses but there is no school for their children. The Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy Brian Lenihan, attended a recent meeting and had the audacity to suggest to parents that the children might be bussed to school all over Dublin. I believe that was a particular scarecrow which was being set up to be knocked down, which is a well-known tactic.
The level of house building in the area is unprecedented. The practice of building prefabricated accommodation at a cost of several million euro is bad economics and bad value for money. My counterpart, the Minister for Finance, sometimes wonders where all the Government money being spent on education is going, and I suggest it is being used up on temporary accommodation.
The school at present is forced to use storage heating because it is temporary accommodation. It has an enormous arrears of electricity costs of approximately €5,000, but the total allocation by the Government for all the usual costs of a primary school is about €6,800.
I know that the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Dempsey, passes the school every day on his way to the Dáil. He should discuss the matter with the parents, teachers and public representatives in Dublin 15. Members from outside Dublin like to talk about the planning situation. People in Fianna Fáil often blame a lack of planning permissions. Fingal County Council has granted planning permission. A large number of houses have been built, and more houses are to be built, the equivalent of a large village or small town, yet there is no permanent school accommodation available. I plead with the Minister of State not to give me the usual excuse about level 6, planning and architectural drawings and so on. He should say that next year he will proceed to build a permanent school and save the State money.
