Article from the Sept. 2006 issue of the Socialist
newspaper of the Socialist Party, Irish section of the CWI

Government fails primary school children

By Fiona O’Loughlin

EARLIER IN the year, in many urban areas around the country, hundreds of children who were ready to start school this September were told there was no space for them in their local primary schools.

In west Dublin, this is the case in the Littlepace/ Ongar area, in Huntstown / Hartstown, in Clonsilla and in the Castleknock area and many, many other areas. Children in Laytown School in Co. Meath were sent home on their first day as there were no classrooms to accommodate them. One solution being put forward, which was quite rightly rejected by the parents, was a rota system whererby children as young as four would go to school in the afternoon!!

Many thousands of our primary school children are educated in prefabs which are supposed to be a temporary solution, but many children are in prefabs from junior infants until sixth class. Indeed such is the crisis in school building, that many schools are grateful to get an extra prefab.

This is the government that has insisted on increasing residential densities in our communities from 10 houses per acre to more than 20 houses and apartments per acre. These factors have increased the numbers of children needing places in primary school in these communities. But there has been a scandalous failure by government to provide the necessary educational and social infrastructure.

Although many of the children threatened with exclusion did eventually find places, parents and children must not be put through this trauma again.