The Department of Education's insistence that voluntary groups must provide accommodation, and the higher standards imposed this year for such accommodation, puts enormous pressure on parents, writes Paul Rowe
The continued refusal of the Department of Education to provide accommodation for urgently needed new schools is indefensible. It is leading to a situation where the State could face legal action from parents and children whose rights are being denied.
This week, as happens around this time every summer, groups of parents face a situation where a viable demand for a school has been acknowledged by the Government, but no school will open.
This is because the State insists that a school cannot start unless the voluntary group concerned provides the accommodation.
While this is not new, what has perversely aggravated the situation this year is an improvement in the standards required for accommodating primary school children.
This has placed many community facilities out of reckoning for start-up projects - higher standards are imposed on a local scout den than apply in many existing schools.
The unwillingness of the State to build new schools is putting enormous pressure on parents.
The additional criteria introduced this year have significantly raised the hurdles they have to vault.
Voluntary groups have to scour the area for accommodation, any possible option has to be checked out, valuers' and architects' opinions sought, and planning permission, fire certificates, draft leases and tax clearance certificates obtained.
If any fail, the search has to go on and the expenses clock up.
This year, we estimate the average cost of this process is €30,000. All of this has to be borne by a relatively small number of parents.
While charities such as Educate Together are now able to provide minimal support, such levels of financial commitment are socially exclusive and restrict this activity to groups that can access funds.
There are, of course, other important aspects to creating a new school: discussing and deciding educational policies, training volunteers, the establishment of management structures and the selection of staff.
If at the end of a year's work, no suitable accommodation is available, the State will not step in to provide, irrespective of the scale of demand or the project's benefit to the community.
The worry that such situations creates is considerable and should be a matter of public concern. Parents have to seek alternative arrangements for their children either in home education or in local schools.
In housing developments, there are often no places in existing schools and parents have to consider travelling long distances for their children's education. If they choose home education, one parent may have to leave employment.
If the reasons for the demand for the new school are on ethical or educational grounds, parents are compelled to seek places in schools that conflict with their conscience or lawful preference.
As a result, the State stands by while their constitutional rights are violated.
In most cases, there is simply no building available to a voluntary group that can accommodate a school.
In developing areas for instance, there are acres of new houses and no community facilities.
A particular irony - as shown by the accommodation crisis in Lucan, Donabate and other areas of Dublin - is that there is often a site in the locality that has been specifically reserved for a school under the local development plan, on the initiative of the Department of Education.
Such sites could be available to the State, but rental costs are simply out of the reach of a parent group.
It is absurd that when the school does indeed manage to start (in the case of Lucan in a small scout den some miles away), the State is then able to relocate it to the reserved site, but is unable to take this initiative from the beginning.
In no other area of government does such a restrictive attitude apply towards voluntary community initiatives.
In most areas of health provision, for instance, the State welcomes and supports such initiatives and provides start-up assistance and resources in the public interest.
Only in education does the balance switch to the negative. Instead of encouraging community initiative the emphasis turns to regulating the process of application.
New schools still have to pay a higher proportion of rent than established schools, and grants are given one year behind requirement. Voluntary groups do not receive one cent in recognition of their expenses.
The fact that the State appears to connect a person's right to an education to their ability to source accommodation must surely be anachronistic and unsustainable.
It is many years since the right to vote was restricted to householders.
In more recent times, the State's attempts to similarly resist demands for resources for children with disabilities proved futile.
Educate Together believes it is morally indefensible and counter-productive in the modern context.
It distorts the attempts to introduce planning into the process of creating new schools.
It is costly in the long term and contrary to the public good.
While the historical reasons for such an attitude can be traced back to a time when all schools in the State were promoted by religious bodies with extensive resources in personnel, land and finance, it is difficult to find a rationale to defend such an approach today.
What is extraordinary is that in the year 2003, the Department of Education and Science still provides no supports for groups coming forward to create urgently needed new schools.
At present, the escalating restrictions without equivalent supports are creating a situation where educational charities such as Educate Together are being forced to look to the Constitution and the law to vindicate the rights of the parents they represent.
Paul Rowe is chief executive of Educate Together.