School Funding
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-06
============================================================

Michael Cahill (FF), Kerry

I thank the Minister of State for the response but I have to say it does not match the reality being experienced by many schools across County Kerry. This evening, I have raised consistent and repeated concerns from multiple school communities and I would like to return briefly to a few of them. Scoil Iognáid Rís, Dingle, has a building that is fundamentally unfit for purpose. This is not a minor works issue; it is a full redevelopment issue. In the case of Scoil Réalt na Mara, the funding model is clearly broken in that schools are expected to maintain expanding buildings with completely inadequate grants. In the case of Presentation Monastery National School, Killarney, I stress again that the climate action summer works scheme application, particularly for upgrading the pupil toilets there, must be progressed urgently. These are basic facilities and there is no justification for delay.
As schools cannot continue to operate in a system where essential projects are stuck in bureaucracy, approved funding is not translating into delivery on the ground and principals are left firefighting instead of planning, I will ask again very directly whether the Minister of State will commit to a full assessment of school infrastructure in Kerry. Will he introduce a dedicated refurbishment fund for older schools and will he ensure urgent applications like that of Presentation Monastery National School are fast-tracked without delay? At the heart of all this is a very simple question, namely, why should a child in Kerry be expected to learn in conditions and environments that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the country?
This is about safety, fairness and delivering a basic standard of education infrastructure that every child deserves. If we continue as we are, we are not improving our education system but are allowing it to fall behind. As the Minister of State knows well, the ones paying the price for this are the children sitting in those classrooms every day that are not sustainable.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-06/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-06