Portmarnock children losing out on school places

Labour councillor Brian McDonagh has said that more needs to be done to secure school places for children in Portmarnock.

At this month’s meeting of the Howth/Malahide Area Committee, the Howth-Malahide councillor said it was “important” that the issue was raised at a council level.

McDonagh noted that there is confusion in terms of what responsibilities the Department of Education has and what the Councils have, and the Labour councillor said “if anybody is paying any attention to what’s happening in Portmarnock, they will realise there are 20 people who didn’t get access to a particular school.”

He noted that the “date and age of cut-off access to a school has been pushed back to November, when it was previously in January for the date of birth. You have a situation where multiple children are in a position where they have to start school, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to start school.”

Last year, local TD Duncan Smith raised the issue in the Dáil, and he was told that the Educate Together school in Broomfield would be used to help alleviate the issue; when the new list of schools was published by the Department of Education in terms of class allocations, the school was left off the list.

McDonagh said, “If I believed this was a once-off or a year or two bottleneck that would resolve itself because we were at the height of the pressure, it wouldn’t have the high priority that it does.”

“We need the Department to start looking at the requirements and to take action of some sort to ensure that we have a decent provision of schools,” the Labour councillor said.

“If we look at the huge amount of children and young people who need schools, a lot of the overflow schools in the area are rapidly going to be approaching overflow.”

He said there has been “no real solution” from the Department, and said that parents are under “economic pressure.”

“You need two incomes in order to pay the costs of housing in the area; there isn’t a national childhood early education system, and there isn’t a place for a third year if your child doesn’t get a place in a particular area. I am aware of the complexities of what the Department is and isn’t responsible for, but I am looking for the support of the councillors in the area.”

The Howth-Malahide councillor said that the issue is “more pressing than some of the localised pressure you get in different areas,” noting that a school in Malahide was granted an extra class in the recent round of allocations, but Portmarnock were not.

McDonagh noted that planning permission has been secured for a site in Broomfield and that the permission was secured prior to his election as a councillor in 2014.

“The reason that there’s a lower density housing in south Portmarnock than there would be in, say, in Clongriffin right beside the train station, is because of the flight paths.”

“Councillors in the development plan put a school into the site, but management removed it due to rules – which no longer fully apply – to being under the flight path,” he explained.

The Labour councillor it was “not up to any other school” to solve it, and said that the buck stopped with the Department of Education.

“From a government point of view, their answer last year was that they were going to solve the problem; then the report came out, and the money wasn’t there.”

The Department of Education said there had been a €600 million overspend, and McDonagh said it was local schools that were paying the cost.

“It is the Department that has to come up with it (a resolution to the problem).

The Labour councillor said that Fingal County Council has “lost a bargaining chip” in terms of the school site and the zoning land, but he said he was “hopeful” that the council could put pressure on the Department to solve the issue.

Fellow Howth-Malahide councillor Joan Hopkins noted, “there is a philosophy that the school beside you is the best school, and some of you with younger children will know about that; parents are under huge pressure in the area.”

The Social Democrats councillor said that parents are “struggling” as a result of economic circumstances, and that in some cases, there are families where one child is in one school and another child is in a different one.

“It’s a kind of pressure that nobody needs; having to put your child back a year is not necessarily a good thing.”

Hopkins said that local principals have been doing “trojan work” so that local schools can facilitate as many children as possible.

The Soc Dems councillor said that the Department of Education has a capacity sub-department, and local schools are surveyed about the exact numbers.

However, Hopkins said that the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better if the government does not intervene

“If you look at the actual physical distance for people in St Marnock’s, St Helen’s is a long way away; even if they could go up to the two schools on the Malahide Road, you can’t, because we don’t have our greenway yet.”

She said that parents in Malahide are “screaming out” for the provision of additional ASD classes.

“Anything we can get to get the Department of Education to fund the building of that school is absolutely crucial,” noting that a local school has been in a “temporary” location for 15 years.

Fianna Fáil councillor Cathal Haughey said that the issue was an important one to get right.

The Howth-Malahide councillor said, “from my own point of view, this is a massive issue.”

“In south Portmarnock, parents can’t get their kids into St Marnock’s, which is the school they can walk to, then they apply for St. Helen’s, and they are told they can’t get in because they don’t fall into the catchment area.”

The Fianna Fáil councillor said there is “definitely a problem,” and “we need more school places, simple as.”

With the motion being passed, Fingal County Council will now write to the Department of Education.