School Accommodation
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-14
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Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South

I hope the Minister of State will relay my thanks to the officials in the Department of education for the hard work they do in the prioritisation of capital investment in developments in south Dublin city, which she has just described. My view is that education is a silver bullet. Schools should be palaces. In past centuries, we built cathedrals. I propose that our schools should be the cathedrals of the 21st century. I hope the Government shares that vision. As a son of educators, I insist on no less.
I will raise the case of a specific school, which might be illustrative. My constituency is home to some communities that have been left behind for far too long by the powers that be. One of those communities in Ringsend has a national school that is badly in need of capital investment works to upgrade its old 1960s building. I toured the school with the principal last week. He highlighted plumbing problems, old electrical wiring and other structural works required for the new merger between the girls' school and the boys' school, which share a building but are not connected, up and running. It is a major priority for me to see this school and its students supported by the Department of education and that it gets the capital investment it requires.
In the past, this school has also been threatened with losing teachers and SNAs because of arbitrary thresholds on student numbers. In one sense, I understand the logic. Resources must go where the needs are. However, I assure the Department and the Minister that, from my own personal experience, I know this is a school full of children who need more investment, not less. The existing faculty do unbelievable work in supporting children in the most unimaginable situations. I plead for resources to be increased as much as possible in that context.
I am concerned by some of the operational hurdles the Minister of State mentioned, which many schools in my constituency are facing at the moment. One parent reported to me that a school in Ballsbridge lost 80% of its teaching staff in one year because of the pressures of the housing crisis. Another reported fundraising to keep the lights on and the heat up in the school. There are acute problems in staffing and proper operational supports for many schools. Despite the efforts the Minister of State has described, I wonder if the Department and the Government are doing enough of the boring hard work of making sure the teachers are there, the lights are on and that schools are well-built, delivered on time and warm along with the new innovative things like changing curricula or announcing the hot school meals programme.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-14