Minister needs to practise what he preaches
I wonder whether he ever reads his own spin or whether his pronouncements merely demonstrate his complete lack of respect for the voting public.
He bleats about budgetary building constraints, particularly in the national school sector, yet plans to overhaul his own departmental building.
He says the education system should reflect the changing ethnic population but doesn't treat the multi-denominational Educate Together as the growing force for an integrated society that it is.
He intends to waste money on yet another policy group while the children whose interests he is supposed to be serving are either being excluded from school through no fault of their own (overcrowding, long waiting lists) or are being educated in highly unsuitable premises.
He says he wants to widen access to education equality, yet his departmental intransigence has created a situation where the Donabate and Portrane Educate Together national school in Dublin is being pressured to take on children from its waiting list (who had no school places two weeks into the school year) while the school has yet to get formal recognition from his department.
Children from junior infants to second class are being taught by excellent staff in a building totally unsuited to the purpose a golf club function room.
This situation was supposed to end when temporary accommodation could be erected on land leased from the local community centre.
But now the community centre has run into financial difficulties and Fingal County Council intends to sell off the land in order to bail out the centre.
The council blames the Department of Education and the department blames the council and also the parents who have valiantly fought for this school to provide the very service that Mr Dempsey appears to be promoting.
Isn't it time that he and his officials demonstrated that they could, in fact, practise what they preach: recognise the Donabate and Portrane Educate Together National School, provide the funding for a site that the school's board of management considers suitable for at least a seven-year occupation and give the go-ahead for all works to start now?
Esther Smyth,
Eden Grove,
Donabate,
Co Dublin.
