Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in to give a statement on such a serious issue. I have just a few questions. To reiterate what Deputy Byrne has said, why did it take so long to publish the reports? Why would a principal have to write to the Department seven times to ensure pupils' safety? Why was the Minister's Department so reluctant to give that information? Why did it take an intervention from the Information Commissioner for the reports on these five schools to be released? Surely principals should not have to beg for information to make sure their pupils are safe. In the end they had to rely on a freedom of information request submitted by a journalist, in this case the Dublin Inquirer. In the case of Belmayne Educate Together national school, there were simple solutions in respect of the stores which were present on the stairs. Had the school been told about that it could have cleared those stores. It seems nonsensical that schools would be kept in the dark about these issues rather than being worked with to fix problems as quickly and as effectively as possible.

That leads on to the next question. What processes will the Minister put in place to increase transparency and direct communications? He mentioned that he has written to the schools in respect of guidance and protocols on schools' responsibilities, but again there is no point in doing that because we have seen that principals were seeking the information and were not getting it. One can have every fire drill in the world, but if a school will burn down within 60 minutes, a principal is entitled to that information, as is every child and every single person who works in that building. It is despicable.

Does the Minister intend to introduce a programme to audit the fire safety of all school buildings in the State? Perhaps that could not be done in one year but it could be done on a phased basis. Will the Minister indicate a timeline for that? It seems there are at least 17 schools which need to be looked at as soon as possible. They are the other 17 which were built by Western Building Systems, apart from the five which we are discussing today. I imagine that some of this work was subcontracted out. Does the Department have a comprehensive list of work undertaken on any school by any company which held a subcontract under Western Building Systems? That would seem to be the very minimum which needs to be done. I imagine it would add up to considerably more than 25 schools.

As I said earlier, for practical reasons all schools cannot be audited immediately, but I would ask the Minister to consider that. We need to ensure the safety of all children in every school in Ireland. If the Minister is not willing to do that, will he outline why he believes that the sample which he has sought in his tender will be able to catch any and all fire safety deficiencies in the country? It seems from these five schools that the instance of fire safety deficiencies could be much higher than could be dealt with by auditing just 25 schools.

The Minister stated in his reply to a recent parliamentary question that 37 schools were refused fire safety works by his Department since 2015. While the information as to why each one is a mystery and has not been provided, there still appears to be a huge number of refusals, especially when weighed up against the number of approvals. For example, in Donegal over the past three years only two out of seven applications have been approved.

I am just looking for information on that. Why are there so many refusals?