Mr. Hubert Loftus:

Correct. The more common applications that we get on a regular basis are under our additional accommodation scheme for additional classroom accommodation, and they come in on a daily and weekly basis. They are turned around pretty quickly. The vast bulk of them stack up and are approved.

On the provision of playing pitches, given that since approximately 2000 the Department is increasingly the purchaser of school sites, in contrast with historical arrangements, our focus is to ensure the school site is sufficient to cater for the building and the play areas. The capacity to provide pitches can depend on the site that we buy, particularly in urban areas, and the cost of land, which is not always a feasible issue to manage. We are particularly conscious that hard play areas provide a more sustainable, usable facility for schools throughout the winter period than grass play areas do.

As a general comment, which links in to Deputy Martin's question about inventory, PE hall facilities and so on, the national sports strategy was published during the summer, and one of the issues to be examined as part of that is a national sports facilities audit, which would look at facilities and sports facilities in schools. We will engage with that Department on that. It is envisaged that this will be done on a regular basis, and that the first such audit will be done within a two-year period. It will feed into the work we will do on refurbishment and the increased emphasis on refurbishment under the school building programme, as well as the requirements for PE facilities. That will take a town approach and a cross-Government approach to PE facilities. It may be the case that a particular school may not have a PE facility but there might be a facility adjoining the school or in that town, as part of the sports capital programme or otherwise, that is accessible and can be maximised to make the best use of an asset which has been provided with State funds.

Mr. Paul Hogan mentioned the engagement between the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment and the Department of Education and Skills. There is quite a bit of engagement, and increasingly so under Project Ireland 2040. There is a delivery board that is managed at Secretary General level, which creates better co-ordination. While our forward planning area has some engagement with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, its biggest engagement is with individual local authorities in regard to needs.

Turning to Deputy Martin's question on the decision taken at the meeting she attended in 2017 regarding Our Lady's Grove, the Department did a national demographic analysis in 314 school planning areas. It was a big exercise that looked at all the various sources of data. When the committee visited Tullamore in relation to this, we briefed it on child benefit data, housing data, local authorities and so on, to find out where the needs were, what the capacity within the existing school system was, and what capacity could be managed by extending existing schools. Ultimately, it was completed in the first or second quarter of 2018, and led to the announcement in April 2018 of the requirement for 42 new schools over the next four years.

Deputy Thomas Byrne asked for an update on those 42 schools. The Department provided an update to the committee in May or June and, in September, it is the Department's intention to provide a further, comprehensive update on all 42 schools rather than discussing them individually now. Much progress is being made in terms of actioning those schools. The more immediate needs in regard to those schools are the schools due to open in September 2019 and we have engaged a project management team to work with the Department in terms of interim solutions that will meet those needs. The new element in regard to that announcement is that the Department is now projecting over a four-year horizon in terms of its accommodation needs and that positions it to better provide permanent accommodation solutions for those schools, particularly during the latter stages of that four-year period.