Tá me buíoch an seans a thabhairt dom an cheist thábhachtach seo a ardú anseo. This school serves one of the most disadvantaged urban communities in the State. Most of the children are from the Sheriff Street-Seville Place district where there is high unemployment and an appalling drug problem. The only chance these children have to escape the cycle of deprivation is through education through their local school. The dedicated teachers, principal and local parents combine to do the best they can. They have a very strong commitment to the welfare and educational needs of the children. They attempt to ensure the children get equality of opportunity in life, but that objective is almost impossible given the conditions of the school and the total lack of funding resources supporting the school.
I cannot adequately describe the conditions within the school premises. They are a disgrace to successive Governments and to this House. The toilets can only be described as Dickensian; they have to be seen to be believed. The windows of the school are held together with wire and tape. The capitation grant referred to by the Minister in a recent reply to a parliamentary question which I tabled is totally insufficient to do basic plastering, painting and redecoration work which is extensively needed in the school such is the neglect. The school building desperately needs major refurbishment and new windows and toilets. The principal needs an office. There is need for complete internal and external redecoration.
Security is a major problem because of the dilapidated condition of the windows. The school has been broken into several times recently and attempts were made to burn it down. Beautifully decorated classrooms, work done by the children and local mothers, were destroyed in the arson attack. A small minority of vandals were responsible for that. The vast majority of the local community is most supportive. Following the recent attacks on the school, public meetings were called and door to door collections organised to pay for repairs, but an impoverished local community cannot realistically fund the necessary work.
A security alarm system and secure boundary fencing are necessary. The position is so bad that each morning the school staff must clear the yard of needles and other materials left by addicts overnight. The school authorities were told verbally by Department officials that there is no funding available for the necessary work. Despite that, the school management again recently applied for funds to the Department of Education and Science. I mention this predicament to ask the Minister to expedite a decision. If that is not done the school will simply die. Maybe that is what the Department wants. The experience of the school over the years is that it has been allowed to decline with a view to removing it altogether from the area.
It is ironic that St. Laurence O'Toole's CBS, where my father went to school, is in the heart of the docklands redevelopment area. We are constantly told that the necessary training and education up to third level will be provided for local children as part of the docklands initiative. I recently raised this matter with the chief executive of the docklands authority and asked him how this school and the children who attend it fit into the grandiose vision of the future docklands community. Has a school so disgracefully neglected any chance of preparing these children to give them equality of opportunity in the docklands area? Is it any wonder heroin abuse is widespread and drug dealing out of control a few hundred yards from the school playground? The buck stops at the Minister's desk and I will be interested in what he has to say.
I pay tribute to the several infant schools, junior schools and this national school in the Sheriff Street area where the staff, despite the conditions I mentioned, do fantastic work for the local children. They are, however, fighting an uphill battle because they do not get the support they deserve from Government.
