Mr. Hubert Loftus:

In 2016, the Department engaged the assistance of Wexford County Council under the MOU to identify a site for the Wexford Educate Together school. In 2017, Wexford County Council identified and assessed a potential six-acre site for the school in Clonard. This site was assessed further by site acquisition consultants on behalf of the Department. A meeting was held in 2017 between departmental officials and Wexford County Council to review this preliminary assessment. Council officials confirmed that they considered the site in question to be suitable for the primary school development. When there was then an identified need for a replacement school building for Selskar College, the Department would have consulted Wexford County Council at that stage as well.

To summarise, we liaised closely with the council. We would have site acquisition managers and consultants working for us because we do not have the resource to identify and work through every blade of grass in a potential site area but our team has been in Wexford as part of that.

As I said earlier, no site is perfect. Every site has its own challenges to be managed. When I look at projects and new schools that we are delivering separately, over the course of 2022 we have over 50 new schools out at construction. Many of them, and campus school projects, are being delivered on sites that are a fraction of the size of the site in question, which is 16 acres.