Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 5 Feb 2002

Vol. 547 No. 3

Adjournment Debate. - Schools Building Projects.

Mr. Healy

I appeal to the Minister for Education and Science to immediately approve the appointment of a design team for Ballyclerihan national school, County Tipperary. Ballyclerihan village is expanding rapidly. In the past five years there has been significant housing development, both local authority and private housing, where in excess of 100 houses have been built in the village. The village has been designated in the county development plan as a centre of expansion and has its own development plan which is being statutorily approved. In that plan the population increase is estimated at 900 over the next five years and 1,500 over the next ten years. It will be appreciated that Ballyclerihan is a vibrant village expanding at an enormous rate.

A new school was built in the village in 1996 and on its opening was too small. An extension was built in 1998 and again on its opening was too small to cater for the number of students attending. A further extension was applied for in 1999. That is the extension that is being dealt with and for which I ask the Minister to appoint a design team.

The school is completely overcrowded and its facilities are totally inadequate for modern teaching and learning in this day and age. The school has 117 pupils, a staffing level of four teachers, a learning support teacher and a resource teacher. It was so overcrowded that in September 2001 the 25 pupils of third and fourth classes had to move to the local parish hall a quarter of a mile away. In that hall the 25 pupils are taught by a single teacher with no supports whatever. That teacher is isolated from the school and should any untoward incident occur, serious issues on health and safety grounds would be raised. The learning support teacher has to teach the pupils in the kitchen area of the hall. Families are split. Some children attend the parish hall while other family members attend the school. If the teacher is sick or otherwise engaged the pupils have to be taken back to the school and into already overcrowded classrooms.

In the main school, the small library storage area is used as a teaching area, as is the staff room. There is no general purposes room or a PE room. There is no PE except when the weather is favourable. Lunches are eaten in the classrooms.

There is a need for two classrooms, a general purposes room, a principal's office, a staff room, staff toilets, a parents' room and storage facilities. The board of management and the parents are frustrated by the lack of action on the part of the Minister and request that a design team be appointed immediately. It appears the Minister has not allowed the consultants' advisory committee, which recommends the appointment of design teams, to meet since last April, nine months ago. Since then no design team has been appointed, certainly not to Ballyclerihan.

The board of management and the parents are a progressive team and are prepared to do all in their power to meet the Minister more than half way to ensure the extension is built for their sons and daughters, the pupils of the school. I specifically ask the Minister to immediately approve the appointment of the design team and to meet representatives of the board of management at Ballyclerihan national school.

Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science (Mr. O'Dea)

At present the school has a staffing level of a principal, three mainstream class teachers, a shared remedial teacher and a shared resource teacher based at the school. The enrolment on 30 September 2001 was 114 pupils. The school's present facilities consist of three permanent classrooms and limited ancillary accommodation.

The allocation for primary buildings in 2002 is €153.6 million, which is a record level of funding and demonstrates the Government's commitment to improving accommodation in primary schools. This is almost four times the previous Government's investment in 1997.

Mr. McGrath

The usual answer. The Minister of State is preaching again.

Mr. O'Dea

Because of the greatly increased level of activity in the primary buildings area since the Government came to office, there has been a substantial increase in the number of major and minor building projects in construction and this has given rise to a record level of building and refurbishment activity.

There are more than 450 major primary school building projects in architectural planning. A proposed building project at St. Michael's national school, Ballyclerihan, will also proceed to architectural planning, as soon as it is possible to do so, under the Government's expanded building programme.

The Department is fully committed to the provision of improved accommodation at St. Michael's national school, Ballyclerihan, and I thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to outline the position to the House.

Mr. McGrath

While I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dea, to the House I am disappointed the Minister has not appeared. Having looked through the record, the Minister for Education and Science has rarely appeared to take Adjournment debates. He should be ashamed of himself given the line up of Deputies who night after night highlight complaints concerning schools in their areas. He sends in the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dea. It is not that the Minister of State is not able to respond but it is not fair to heap such burdens on him.

Mr. Creed

Can I take it that we will get the same reply?

Mr. McGrath

St. Mary's College, Mullingar, has a long, proud and distinguished record of providing second level education in Mullingar. The Heevy Institute was established in Mullingar more than 150 years ago by the Irish Christian Brothers and these brothers and an expanding lay staff have provided a top class education to successive generations of young men in the Mullingar area. More recently young ladies also attend as students at St. Mary's College.

A new school to accommodate 350 pupils was built in 1971. This quickly became inadequate to accommodate the enrolment. In 1994, a lift to facilitate wheelchair access to the upper level of this school was sanctioned by the Department with an allocation of £100,000. This work was not proceeded with nor has the money been drawn down, rather these works are to be incorporated into a new extension to this school which has been on the books since 1995. Since that date the Department has acknowledged that a school with capacity for 600 students was required. A design team was appointed in 1996 and over the next couple of years, various design options were explored and site examination was completed.

By 1999, a particular design option was agreed, incorporating a technology and woodwork room, a new science laboratory, a music room, a tiered lecture room, general classrooms etc. and stage four and five submission was made to the Department in May 2001.

Shamefully, despite weekly phone calls to the Department by the school principal, Mr. Joe O'Meara, the project remains submerged in the Department's offices in Tullamore. Is it a coincidence that the school received correspondence from the Department today when the Department knew this issue was to be raised in the House tonight?

The situation is intolerable. The flat roofs leak, water flows on to the stairs and into the general purposes room and there are cramped and overcrowded conditions. The 39 staff and 603 students at the school deserve better. The building project is being delayed unnecessarily. It must be given immediate sanction to move to the tendering-building stage for the extension.

If the Minister was to give the project the go ahead tonight, the builders could be on site in May and the building substantially under way by the time the students return in September. However, I fear what we will hear tonight is the same gobbledegook we hear night after night in relation to schools. The Minister of State will stand up and deliver a prepared script from the Department with little reference to the delay that has occurred at the school. Will the Minister of State tell us why the project has moved so slowly? Why has there been no response to the stage 4 and 5 design, even though the Department received it in May last year? I want a real response, not more of the gobbledegook we usually hear.

Mr. Penrose

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this important issue. I wish to bring to the attention of the House the conditions which some of our most distinguished schools have to endure by virtue of the failure of the Government to invest in education. I am sick listening to the one-for-all replies about 1997. They are convoluted nonsense. This is 2002, five years later.

I refer specifically to St. Mary's College in Mullingar which I attended as a young boy. I and all the others who passed through the school are immensely proud of it. During a recent visit I was shocked and saddened by the very difficult conditions with which pupils and teachers at the school have to put up. I assured the young students I would raise the matter in the Oireachtas at the first opportunity.

St. Mary's College and other outstanding schools in our education system have been given the responsibility of providing the young upcoming generations with the secondary education needed for the continued development of the country. The college's teachers and students must set about this task while trying to prevent water leaking from the roof into the science laboratory, computer room and main stairwell. Teachers are forced to concern themselves with the possibility that flat roofs on classrooms will collapse. This should not be the case. How can we expect our schools to achieve and perform while such basic necessities and requirements are not being addressed?

I use the word "achieve" with regard to St. Mary's in the context of the huge contribution the school has made in the local area for many years. It has an outstanding academic record as well as an incomparable record on the sports field, the most recent example of which was provided by two current students, Martin Fagan and Mark Christie, who are doing the county and country proud on the athletic field. Such achievements reflect a commitment to excellence among the students and teachers, which occurs in spite of the system, rather than because of it. They continue to maintain and improve the school's academic and sporting records with one hand tied behind their backs in terms of the educational investment and facilities available to the school.

Were it not for the funding provided by the Christian Brothers and parents over the years, the position would be desperate, indeed, unsustainable. If we, as public representatives, want to continue drawing attention to the educated workforce we are turning out, we must start putting our money where our mouth is. While I admit to being less than totally objective on this issue, no educational institution warrants such investment more than St. Mary's College. I call on the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Woods, to accelerate the programme of development in the school by immediately providing the extra accommodation it needs.

The school recently put back into operational use classrooms which were withdrawn as obsolete and considered unsuitable for use when I attended the school in 1972. The school has more than 600 students and, as Deputy McGrath stated, is having to utilise every available space for classrooms. The conversion of cloakrooms and even bicycle sheds for classroom use is utterly unacceptable. I refer to this by way of an illustration of the desperate measures to which a fine school is resorting to try to provide the best possible education for its students.

I salute the management, teachers and students of my alma mater and assure them I will continue to work on their behalf to try to get the facilities they merit. I call on the Minister to take the crisis requirements of this school seriously. It must be authorised to proceed to put its new building requirements out to tender as quickly as possible in order to enable the commencement of the new building programme to take place this summer. Nobody denies that due process must be followed to ensure all requirements specified by the Department and its building unit are met before tendering and building are allowed to commence, but there must also be flexibility in the system to deal with urgent, crisis, conditions such as those applicable in this case. I ask the Minister to deal with the exceptional circumstances prevailing in this school in an enlightened way and on an exceptional basis.

Mr. O'Dea

I am glad the Deputy has given me the opportunity of outlining to the House our Department's current position regarding this matter.

In February 1995 the Department received an application for additional accommodation from St. Mary's CBS, Mullingar, County Westmeath. As additional accommodation was sought, the Department's planning section projected a long-term enrolment figure for the school to determine the number of pupils it was likely to cater for in the future. A long-term enrolment of 600 pupils was projected. In June 1995, on foot of this projection, the school was asked to fill in an educational worksheet which was returned to the Department on 9 June 1995. Such a worksheet allows a school to illustrate the curricular provision it intends to provide for its long-term projected enrolment. Based on the long-term projected enrolment and completed educational worksheet, a schedule of overall accommodation was sent to the school on l0 July 1995. However, this was queried by the school and a revised schedule issued on 14 July 1995, which was accepted by the school on 19 July 1995.

The schedules of residual accommodation and suggested future use were sent to the school in December 1995 and accepted. The schedules of accommodation set out the extent and type of accommodation needed by the school to make the curricular provision included on the educational worksheet for the long-term projected enrolment. As such, they provide the basis of the brief for the design team engaged to undertake the architectural planning of building at a school. On 17 January 1996 the building unit of the Department was therefore in a position to appoint a design team for the proposed extension to the school. The extra accommodation to be built was 950 square metres.

In November 1996 the school authorities were given permission by the Department to appoint a design team. The school nominated design team was given the approval of the Department in January 1997. The school was asked to submit a stage 1, site suitability, briefing and site report submission of the Department's design team procedures, which was received in May 1997 after a site meeting. It was felt that structural investigations of the school building were required.

The structural analysis report was received by the Department in October 1997 and a further report was received in February 1998. In April 1998 the school authorities were given permission to proceed to stage 2 of the design team procedures. In September 1998 the stage 2 submission was received. Due to slight changes in the parameters of the project – the area of the extension was increased from 950 square metres to 1,303.5 square metres – which became apparent as the architectural design proceeded, revised schedules of accommodation were agreed with the school in December 1998.

In January 1999 the school submitted drawings representing various proposed options for the design of the extension. Having considered these options, the Department gave the school permission to proceed to stage 3 in March 1999. The Department asked the school to submit a draft stage 3 proposal prior to the submission of the final stage 3. This was not done and the stage 3 submission was received by the building unit in September 1999.

Some problems previously raised by our Department were not incorporated with the stage 3 submission as had been requested. This necessitated the Department asking the school's design team for a supplementary report. In January 2000 the school authorities were given permission to submit a combined stage 4 and 5 of the design team procedures, that is, detail design and bill of quantities. The school authorities submitted the stage 4 and 5 submission in May 2001, which was examined in the Department in conjunction with some extra work for which the school applied. It was felt advantageous from a financial point of view to amalgamate the projects.

In November 2000 the school submitted a request for extra works, including new windows, to be included with the proposed extension. In April 2001 the school was asked to submit an architect's report on elements of the new application. This was submitted in July 2001 and in August 2001 the school was given permission to submit tender documentation in order that the new works might be included in the overall extension project. These were received in December 2001.

The building unit of the Department wrote to the school authorities on 4 January 2002 in relation to their stage 4 and 5 submission requesting additional information from the design team. The building unit of the Department awaits a response from the school on the issues raised in that correspondence.