Ms Anne McDonagh:

Other Members asked questions which I will answer in reverse and then I will get around to the original question.

With regard to the four schools being made into one, it is not four schools going into one as no decision has been made. The reason no decision has been made is because the opposition to the project has stymied all of the plans that should be made. The difficulty is that the De La Salle Brothers will finish in 2015.

I was really thinking about the parents and their concerns. There is no doubt that the number of pupils does not warrant two extensive sites. The schools need to be organised and we need to submit a proposal to the Department of Education and Skills. The Department will not put anything in writing about the building of an autism unit, which we need, or the building of a general purpose hall, which we also need. It will not put that in writing until we tell the Department what the structure of the new schools will be. We have to say whether we are going to have a junior and senior school, two vertical schools or three schools.

Nobody ever said there would be one school. That was never in any discussion. No decision has been made about that yet because all of these discussions have been stymied due to the level of opposition. Until these firm proposals are made to the Department of Education and Skills, it will not give us a guarantee about what will happen. What will ultimately happen is that the children will end up going down to the site and we will have less than satisfactory facilities for them, which will be a crying shame. Plans have to be made on the type of structure which will be there - whatever is best - and that will decided by the educational leaders locally.

People said we did not talk to parents. I have a list of the various times we met parents and the schools met parents. Originally, this was supposed to take place in 2014 but based on a request from the parents, it was pushed back to 2015. A meeting was held with parents and representatives from the four schools on 21 November 2013. It took place in Archbishop's House with members of the education secretariat. That was when it was agreed to postpone it until September 2015 to allow parents to become aware of what was happening. There was a meeting on 12 December 2013 when another group of parents came to Archbishop's House. On 20 January 2014, a survey was carried out with the parents. On 10 February 2014, correspondence was received from the Archbishop and he wrote back to the parents after that.

In February 2014, one of our project team spoke to the chairperson of the parents group in regard to correspondence he got from it. The chairperson said the yard was inadequate. That particular person from the project team was the principal of a newly-built school with more than 600 pupils and he said his yard would fit into the yard on the Dominican campus three times over. The yards are state-of-the-art. There were huge facilities in schools way back but they are no longer in schools.

Archbishop Martin met the De La Salle group on 11 April 2014. One of the chairs of the three schools on the Dominican campus said quite a number of parents were in favour of this. A number of parents who talk about the school transferring to the Dominican campus are parents of children who have all gone to the Dominican campus for the first three years, have been very happy there and there is no problem with anything.

In terms of parents being the primary partners and bringing them on board at the outset, and when I talk about the different stages in the process, one must talk to the trustees and the chairpersons at the beginning before one starts to talk to the parents. There is no point in bringing something to the parents if it will not be a viable option. That is why it has to be brought to the chairpersons and the principals at the beginning, that is, to examine the whole situation to see if it is feasible. Once they decide there is a feasible option, it is only then that it is brought to the parents and the staff for discussion. There is no point bringing something to the staff or the parents if it is not going to work. This process has been worked out between the unions and management. I think the agreement between unions and management as to how all of this should be done is there since 1983. As I said, it works very well anywhere it is carried out properly and where the proper steps are followed.