Dilapidated schools - Children’s plight used to buy votes

THERE is hardly a parish in Ireland where parents are not put under pressure to raise funds for the upkeep and refurbishment of the local primary school.

Clearly, they are taking on a role that should be filled by the State. But after years of neglect by successive governments, despairing parents feel obliged to pick up the bills for hundreds of schools fallen into neglect under the gaze of one minister for education after another.

Despite Education Minister Noel Dempsey’s increased budget, the situation is so dire in some areas that frustrated parents and teachers have taken to the picket lines, staging a series of strikes and protests in a bid to highlight the educational plight of their children.

Miraculously, when elections come around, the cynicism of politicians is invariably reflected in a flash-flood of grants for local projects, ranging from schools to medical centres, not to mention spectacular pledges of factories and jobs. Usually, they evaporate once the votes are cast.

In the latest controversy, a charge of using primary schools to buy votes has been leveled at the Coalition by Fine Gael. And, as today’s analysis of official figures by our education correspondent makes clear, the charge sticks.

It shows, for instance, that the Department of Education splashed out 148 million on primary school capital projects in 2002, the year of the last general election.

This was more than double the amount invested two years earlier. Significantly, however, the level of spending fell to under €128 million in 2003.

In most counties, the amount spent on schools rose dramatically over a two-year period. It jumped in 2001 and went up even more sharply when the election was called.

But once the Coalition had regained power, spending on schools fell again. Across the country, parents and school principals were left clutching Government letters containing unfulfilled promises.

One wonders if politicians, who met last night to rake over the embers of the Coalition’s disastrous European and local election performance, yet realise the depth of voter anger in the face of this hypocrisy.

As the INTO sees it, parents would be delighted if elections were held every year. It would mean the

children who now have to sit in leaking classrooms in rat-infested schools, many of them built before the State was founded, might have some hope of getting a modern education in a 21st century setting.

Meanwhile, many children will be doomed to schools more in keeping with the Third World than Europe’s fastest-growing economy, where the growl of the Celtic Tiger is again being heard.

Against this bleak scenario, the country’s schools are a damning indictment of a Government quick to use the plight of children to buy votes but notoriously slow to deliver its promises.