School Admissions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-12
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Réada Cronin (SF), Kildare North

While I appreciate that the Minister is not here, I hope the Minister of State will come back to me on this because it is really frustrating. As a member of the infrastructure committee, it feels as if we criticise every week how upside down the system is. We have so many infrastructural deficits up and down the country. Next week, the committee will have officials from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, in to discuss the use of the census to forecast population and the need for infrastructure. Time and again, I get responses from the Department of Education and Youth mentioning the geographic information system, GIS. I do not believe the system is working because the principals of these secondary schools tell me that they are talking to each other, going through their lists and checking for duplicates. Parents have a right to send their children to their local school and the school their children's friends are going to attend. This would not be an issue for so many TDs in north Kildare if it was not a problem. I truly wonder if the GIS could be used to predict a bit better where people are coming from.
These schools have been crying out for facilities for years and they are now at breaking point. They need extra classrooms and spaces. The new school in Maynooth is being asked to take an extra 200 children. There are two schools beside each other on the same campus, with 1,000 pupils in each. They are already at capacity. My children - my girls - were meant to go to those secondary schools. They were promised when they were in primary school that the schools would be ready for them. They went through their entire secondary schooling in the old building. They never got inside those schools and the schools are already at bursting point. This applies to St. Patrick's school as well.
This is really important. I have spoken to parents whose children move down the list and when they get a place, they feel relief. However, those families should not have to go through this. We need a system that works so that parents and their kids do not have to go through this anxiety every year. It is the same thing every year. The Department says it has places, but it consistently does not have them.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-12