Ms Karen Jordan:

I am grateful for the invitation to attend today. I am the principal of St. Catherine's national school, Donore Avenue, Dublin 8. It is a small Church of Ireland school in Dublin's south-western inner city adjoining the former Player Wills factory site and the St. Teresa's Gardens housing development. Originally constructed in 1903 to serve what at that time was a small and declining Church of Ireland community, the school was extended in 2003 to accommodate a pupil capacity of just over 100. Since then, however, there has been a dramatic increase in the population of the area. This is reflected in our school enrolment of 214 pupils today. The current best practice approach in education focuses on active learning and project-based learning methodologies including school gardens and outdoor Aistear, as well as special educational needs learning, all of which require space for the children to move freely around their learning environment and classroom. This should be reflected in updated Department of Education and Skills guidelines for the provision of classrooms and other rooms and the appropriate sizes for all such rooms, having regard to the needs of their different users.

The Department should be proactive and timely in providing support for expansion of existing schools where this current best practice approach to learning and development cannot be provided due to space and accommodation constraints. This is the case in St. Catherine’s national school at present. In this context, the expansion of St. Catherine’s national school is both necessary and appropriate but cannot be facilitated on the existing property. The Department must give proactive and outside-the-box assistance to such school accommodation solutions in these unique cases, including direct land purchase and transfer to a school. The adjacent lands of the former factory sites and St. Teresa’s Gardens are identified for major regeneration under the current Dublin City development plan. The framework plan envisages a substantial new residential population. I expect this to translate into a new primary school age population of 250 to 300 children. This is in addition to the new population that continues to settle in the area.

The framework states: "Provision shall be made for the expansion of St. Catherine's National School, Donore Avenue, in the re-development of the former Player Wills site, subject to agreement with the Department of Education and Skills". It is clear from this that the Department is presumed to play a proactive role in ensuring adequate provision of primary classroom space, specifically focused on St. Catherine’s school, to ensure the success of the plan. It must be the case, therefore, that the expansion of the school occurs in tandem with the construction of new housing units on the lands, which has already commenced. As such, it is considered that active and early departmental engagement in the planning and programming of the regeneration must occur. This model of interaction may be unusual and probably is unique in the school building programme but I hope the committee can see its utmost importance and take on board the message that the Department's policy and strategy in this area must ensure flexibility to deal with a scenario such as now occurs for St. Catherine’s national school.

I thank the committee for its attention.