The Labour Party will take the responsibility of building schools away from the Department of Education and give it the National Development Finance Agency and will tackle class sizes.
Unveiling Labour's policy on education in Dublin 15, party leader Pat Rabbitte said the area highlighted the problems faced by many parents trying to find school places for their children because of a lack of pre-planning.
Labour Party leader, Pat Rabbitte
"Dublin west highlights the changing face of schools in Ireland. We have a problem about class sizes. We have a serious problem of under-provision of classroom space," said Mr Rabbitte.
He said that 50 per cent of children in the area were in class sizes of 50 per cent or more. He said Labour in Government would cap class at 15:1 in schools where there is a significant disadvantage and move towards capping class sizes at 25:1 in mainstream primary schools.
"Labour in government will tackle these problems head on. We have promised to fund our schools properly, so that they don't have to rely on 'voluntary' donations from parents.
"We will expand the National Educational Psychologist Service so that children don't have to wait up to two years for an assessment, but also to support schools in caring for the mental health of their pupils.
"We will give the National Development Finance Agency the power to acquire sites for and build schools before there is a crisis in class sizes and school places. We will focus our attention on literacy and numeracy standards - the building blocks of educational achievement," said Mr Rabbitte.
Colleague Joan Burton, a TD in Dublin West, said 8,000 new homes had been built in the area over the past 10 years, but that no provision for schools had been made. She said families had been forced to leave the area to find school places for their children.