Schools Building Projects
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-22
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

The school has had to take the decision to subdivide rooms and to move students in order to have special educational needs classes in a setting that is not going to disturb students. I will give a few quotes from parents. Parents have said that every month that passes is actively harming children, that the school is not fit for purpose, that children with additional needs have been failed despite explicit promises and that children are stressed, more constrained and are falling behind through no fault of their own. There is confusion in terms of earlier responses from the Minister, Deputy Naughton, which said that phase 1 would include special educational needs classrooms but now it does not. Another parent said that it is entirely unclear as to the process and that the lack of transparency here is atrocious.
Another very concerning thing is that because of the overcrowding in the school, on a number of occasions students have been found eating their lunches in toilets when it is raining because they have nowhere inside to go. The staff do not allow this and they are told to move as quickly as possible but some of them go in there because there are radiators and it is a warm places to eat. That is not acceptable in 2026. This is the level of the conditions the students are being forced to endure. There are no areas for kids to have extracurricular activities and to meet and have casual chats that make school days, days to remember. It is all about into class and out of class. There is no room to engage and have that quality of life in the school environment. It is heartbreaking to see this for the children.
What we need are firm commitments in respect of the phase 1 modular building, the timber framed and well-insulated building. That is all well and good but in the original outline of the building, can we get clear answers from the Department that phase 2 can be commenced very quickly, because it is modular? The same goes for phases 3 and 4. Can these be designed and planned so they can go in a lot quicker and that in 18 months to two years, we can see the buildings?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-22