Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín TD has said that a parliamentary question he submitted to the Minister for Education has revealed a serious failure at the heart of the State’s school planning system. The Deputy said the response confirmed that the Government does not centrally track how many children are being refused school places or left without one, despite growing pressure on families across the country.
The Deputy said “Parents across the country are living the reality of a school place crisis, yet the Government has now admitted it does not even collect the basic data needed to measure the scale of the problem. My parliamentary question sought clear figures, how many children were refused places?, how many could not secure a place despite applying on time?, and how many were still without a school at the start of the year? Astonishingly, none of these questions were answered.”
“Instead, we learned that there are currently around 400 open ‘no school place’ cases. Even more concerning is the admission that the Department does not hold a definitive national dataset on school place availability or refusals.”
“This is a fundamental failure of planning and oversight. The State has a constitutional obligation to ensure every child has access to education, yet it is effectively operating in the dark. Responsibility is being pushed onto individual schools, while Government avoids accountability”
“Families are being forced to apply to multiple schools, face repeated refusals, and in many cases travel long distances just to secure an education for their children. That is not a functioning system, it is a system under strain and lacking leadership.”
“The Government cannot fix what it refuses to measure. We urgently need a centralised system to track school place demand, refusals, and capacity in real time. Without it, children will continue to fall through the cracks and parents will continue to carry the burden of a system that is clearly not working.” concluded the Deputy.
