What The STAR said:

No School Places for Kids

Hundreds of parents of junior-infant kids are facing an uncertain summer – because the children have been refused a primary place for next September.

About 200 kids – 100 who had applied to St. Patrick’s School in Diswellstown in Castleknock and a further 100 who had applied to Mary Mother of Hope National School in Littlepace – have just been told that there will be no space for them.

Many of the children have had their names on the waiting list for the west Dublin schools since they were born.

Although both schools have threee to four streams of junior infants, they simply cannot accommodate the huge surge in applications for places.

Stephen Carney from Bramblefield near Littlepace had his daughter Emma (4) enrolled at Mary Mother of Hope School but was told just last week that there would be no room for her there.

Mr. Carney told The Star that parents in the area are angry and frustrated.

FAILED

“There has been a massive amount of development in the area over the years but the facilities are not in place to cater for the people living there ” he said.

“My daughter can’t wait to go to school. We may have no option but to either hold her back another year or send her to a school further away”.

Local Labour Party TD Joan Burton said that Government had “failed miserably to provide school facilities to cope with the population explosion in Dublin 15”.

What the Irish Independent said:

John Walshe

An overcrowded primary school in a rapidly expanding Dublin communter belt has had to turn away 128 young children because there is no room for them next September.

The Mary Mother of Hope National School in Littlepace, which is close to the Dublin/Meath border, has decided that anybody born after December 24, 2001 cannot be enrolled in the next school year.

School principal Enda McGorman said he knew many parents were very upset by the decision, but there was no option. Last year the school increased its intake to 116 and was tkaking in the same number again this time.

Labour TD Joan Burton said many parents were furious over the lack of places for pupils from the Littlepace/Clonee/Ongar area, which has expanded massively in recent years.

“Parents who put their child’s name down for a school place the month he or she was born four and a half years ago are now devastated to realise that there is no school place for thier child”, she said.

“This situation would not be acceptable in any country never mind in the booming economy of modern Ireland”.

But Minister Brian Lenihan said the matter was being looked at as a matter of urgency. Talks were taking place with school trustees about opening a new school in the area in time for the coming school year.

Mr. Lenihan said that a separate problem over school accommodation in Diswellstown/Castleknock was the subject of discussions yesterday with the Department of Education’s Building Unit.

Bt Ms. Burton said”If you build 5,000 houses and apartments in the Diswellstown are in Castleknock and a further 8,000 in the Littlepace/Clonee/Ongar area it would seem obvious even to a four year old looking for a place that schools would be required”.

What the Irish Times said:

Not enough school places in West Dublin

About 200 children have failed to get into schools in a west Dublin suburb because of a shortage of accommodation, according to Joan Burton of the Labour Party, writes Seán Flynn.

She said a hundred children had applied to St Patrick’s school, Castleknock, and a hundred more had applied to Mary Mother of Hope national school at Littlepace.

Their parents had been told there was no space for them in junior infants even though some children were on the waiting list since they were born.

Ms Burton said the situation was a direct result of poor planning. “If you build 5,000 houses and apartments in the Diswellstown area in Castleknock and a further 8,000 in the Littlepace/ Clonee/Ongar area, it would seem obvious, even to a four- year-old looking for a place, that schools would be required.”

In both of these areas, however, the department had only now finished building the first of the permanent primary schools.

She said the Minister for Education and the Government had, after nine years in power, “failed miserably to provide school places for the population explosion in Dublin 15”.