I thank the joint committee for inviting us to the meeting. Our experience has been a difficult and upsetting one, to say the least, one which we believe could and should have been avoided. It is an experience we hope no other child, parent or family should have to go through but one which we fear will occur again and again unless lessons are learned and changes made.
I take this opportunity to point to our junior and senior school mottos, "mol an óige" — cherish the young — and "tus maith leat na h-oibre" — a good start is half the battle. This September saw the youngest of the young not so cherished and a good battle just to get half a start. Education is a basic human right. It is shameful that in the land of "Unity, Prosperity, Community" 130 children went very close to not receiving that human right. As it stands, 91 began their education at 2 p.m., filling the seats that older children had vacated as they finished their day of schooling, while 39 were scattered to the four corners of the county in search of spare places in schools outside their community, or put off embarking on their education altogether for another year. Currently, the children begin their school day at the more normal time of 9 a.m. but in the inadequate, substandard accommodation that is the senior school's gym hall. Two adult-sized toilets are shared by 60 children, while over 600 are deprived of physical education and extra-curricular activities that normally take place in this, the very heart of a school. It is heartbreaking to think our children would have better facilities if they were criminals in our judicial system.
Children as young as 12 and 13 years are becoming commuters in our secondary school commuter belt, leaving their homes at 7 a.m. or 7.30 a.m. to make the journey to secondary schools in Drogheda, Balbriggan and even as far away as Swords. Is it any wonder east Meath is experiencing a drop-out rate of one in four in secondary education? We can expect a higher drop-out rate as the secondary schools in these areas that historically took our children have now closed their doors as they are full to capacity. All of this is happening in the Laytown-Bettystown area and with a new story on school crises cropping up weekly in the news, it seems obvious changes are needed. Children are educated in football clubs, gyms, race-course buildings, classrooms with no windows and disused toilets. Some go through their entire primary education programme without having experienced an actual school building. How prosperous Ireland seems if one is not a child.
County councils are giving free rein to zoning land for monstrous housing developments, hotels and gaming facilities, yet there is not a conscience among councillors or planners when it comes to providing any social infrastructure for the families moving to these areas. East Meath, with a population of 22,000, does not even have a rope for children to swing on. It has no playgrounds, no community centre, no library, no playing fields and has not had a classroom built since 1974.
It would be easy for the Department of Education and Science to blame county councils or, in the case of the Minister, to blame parents and, as she puts it, "ready-made families" moving to an area and, by all accounts, surprising everybody. How surprised should she be? Nobody should be surprised considering a report made to the Department in December 2002, entitled, Commission on School Accommodation, which states:
...the most significant increases occurred in Counties Meath and Kildare where the population increased by 22.1% and 21.5% respectively. This change in population is attributed to a combination of natural increase and net migration [ready-made families on the move, in other words]. The dynamics underlying the demographic trend since 1996 indicate that further growth is expected for the next 28 years ... An examination of migration classified by age group 0-14 for 1992-2001 indicates that the recent trend in net migration is having and will continue to have an impact on school enrolments for the foreseeable future.
The report lists the towns and areas involved and recommends time and again: "Overall responsibility for ensuring a site is reserved where need has been identified should reside with the Department of Education and Science".
We believe proactive planning would serve our children better than reactive distribution of prefabs to firefight increases in population. We believe there should be a formula, beginning with local government or the Department and ending with the provision of schools. Legislation should be put in place to protect our children's right to an education. For every X number of acres zoned residential, X number of acres should be zoned educational and ownership of these sites should be assigned in trust to the local authority before the rezoning becomes effective, long before housing is granted planning permission. This would ensure, at the very least, that a site was ready to be developed.
If a school is to be built, the Department should deal with the entire process. Only at the point of completion should responsibility for its running be handed over to a patron. We cannot continue to leave the responsibility of providing land for schools in the hands of well meaning but inexperienced patrons and boards of management. We cannot continue to accept the unacceptable, excuse the inexcusable and live with this appalling standard of school accommodation for our children. We cannot continue to expect teachers and principals to struggle to educate our children. In the Ireland of "Unity, Prosperity, Community", the words "struggle" and "educate" should not be in the same sentence.
We recommend as a matter of urgency that the recommendations made in this report and the recent ESRI report be put into action and that taxpayer's money be spent well. The recent report from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child made several recommendations on education which I quoted in my letter to the committee. How many reports with recommendations do we need before changes are made? It is incumbent on the committee to take action and decide our children deserve more.
I thank committee members for their attention. I would like to introduce Ms Louise Daly, another parent from the east Meath area with concerns.