Dublin West has been growing faster than any other area in Europe. Thousands of new houses and apartments have gone up in the last six years with tens of thousands of new residents.
Scandalously, however, the educational infrastructure has been allowed to lag drastically behind. There is a crisis in terms of permanent buildings and also each year a crisis with a shortage of places for children needing to start school.
This is a shocking indictment of the Fianna Fáil/ PD government in power now for almost ten years. They allowed developers a free hand in constructing thousands of homes, making obscene profits and leaving the new young parents who purchased homes in the lurch as far as securing places in a local school for their children.
The effect of this negligence is seen in shameful situations in Dublin West. In Tyrrelstown the Educate Together Primary School is in prefabs beside the estate, but this can only accommodate some of the children. The remainder have to be carted each day to another school two miles away in Blanchardstown Village.
It is believed that the developer was stalling on the sale of the permanent site for this school to the Department of Education until Fingal County Council would promise him rezoning for a further 2,000 houses on land he owns in the area.
In another part of Dublin West, no less than three primary schools are located on one site. There is the permanent school for the Littlepace area which parents had to campaign strongly for. But then a new Educate Together School and a new Catholic Primary School, both designed for the Ongar area, have been forced to temporarily locate on this site also. Ongar is a new community of several thousand homes at least a mile and a half from Littlepace. Again the permanent site earmarked for these schools is only now being sorted out.
Even in the older areas of Dublin West such as Huntstown, Hartstown and Castleknock there was a very difficult situation last spring when over 100 children could not initially be accommodated in local schools. The Department of Education was forced to take emergency action to add some new class rooms to meet that crisis.
The local Socialist Party is now demanding urgent action from the government to address the schools issue. Socialist Party T.D. Joe Higgins has tabled a set of parliamentary questions to the Minister for Education demanding a precise account of exactly where the children of Dublin West and their parents stand at the beginning of the new school year in September.
We are demanding a guaranteed place for each child in local schools. This means that all school sites must be secured immediately and then have permanent structures built.
Similarly second level places need to be urgently expanded in order to accommodate the growing teenage population. At least two new schools are needed, one for the Ongar/Littlepace area and another in Castleknock. Neither will it be very long before demand emerges for a new secondary school in the Tyrrelstown area.
The government parties are being warned that they had better make serious moves to resolve the schools crisis in Dublin West or face a strong and determined campaign by parents and local residents which the Socialist Party will strongly support.
In addition to all that, the permanent school in Littlepace has a one and a half acre site beside it which the school and the community badly needs for extra space. But the developer wants to build shops and apartments on it instead. This will also be the subject of a campaign which the Socialist Party will wage with local residents.
