The Labour Party has strongly criticised a decision by the Department of Education not to release inspection reports on local primary schools into the public domain.
The party's education spokeswoman, Ms Jan O'Sullivan TD, said the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, was "attempting to keep parents in the dark" about conditions in local schools.
She said schools throughout the regions were in a dreadful state and Mr Dempsey knew inspection reports would reveal this starkly to the public and parents.
She said the Minister's stated objective this week of bringing more openness to the school system was in direct contradiction to the decision of his Department.
"Announcing the school buildings programme for 2003, the Minister claimed he wanted to open up the process of school improvements and building projects. It now seems that they were hollow words given his ongoing refusal to provide parents with information from inspector's reports about the conditions in which their children are working at school," she said.
"One can understand the reluctance of the Minister to publish this sort of information as it would no doubt reveal a catalogue of Victorian conditions in the country's schools.
"The school buildings programme for 2003 is a sop to hundreds of schools which are experiencing truly appalling conditions ranging from raw sewage and rats in their schoolyards, to leaking roof and rotting windows," said Ms O'Sullivan.
The Department said this week it would not release the reports because it could create tensions with the education partners, including the teacher unions. The reports are compiled every few years by inspectors.
Inspections are the main tool used to evaluate the quality of education provided in schools. They are freely available in the British education system, but for several years teachers in the Republic have strongly opposed their publication. The Department has refused to release them under the Freedom of Information Act.
Ms O'Sullivan said if the Minister was committed to transparency in the school improvement process, then he could start by ensuring that parents were kept informed about the conditions in which their children were being educated.
The National Parents Council (primary) has long campaigned for parents to be given more information on their local school.
Its chief executive Ms Fionnuala Kilfeather has said such reports should be made public, even if certain personal information has to be taken out.