Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What was the rationale for the proposal to close the school, which has all of the sports facilities and has the capacity to expand in the future, if needs be, and to amalgamate it with a school which has a school yard the size of this room? Nobody has answered those questions. What Mr. Bennett has told me is that what happened was that there was a proposal to address the falling enrolment numbers by allowing the school to enrol junior and senior infants. That was turned down by the patron. Nobody has given a reason for that. I agree it is probably because of the knock-on effect on the Presentation school and St. Vincent's and that is a real concern for those particular girls' schools. However, we got from that situation to a proposal being presented to the school to close the very school which has a long tradition of education and which is on an educational campus. The school building was just going to be left idle. There was talk about moving Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers into that school building but I do not know whether that was the case or what was the proposal for the school building. Regardless of all that, we are at situation where, according to ERST's press release, the proposal is off the table at this time. We have to presume that discussions are ongoing around the future on the North Monastery primary school.