Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I have a number of short questions to follow up from earlier.

Regarding the special school in Glanmire, there was a site that the Department either acquired or is still in the process of acquiring from Cork City Council. Can Mr. Loftus provide an update on that? I talk to many special education needs organisers, SENOs, and stakeholders on the group who are predicting we are heading for another shortage in terms of capacity for special school places in Cork. We do not want to be reminded of the difficulties we had two years ago. Ultimately they were resolved with the opening of the new school in Carrigaline but that was a very difficult period. Can Mr. Loftus give an update regarding that site? Second, and this goes back to the Chair's earlier point on the site in Wexford, can Mr. Loftus talk me through step-by-step the interaction between the Department and the council in relation to how the development plan gets impacted? Does the council contact the Department as part of the development plan process and it responds? I am assuming this is probably the way or is the Department actively in there every year or every second year? Is the six-year turnover for the development plan sufficient to do the kind of forward planning in which it engages?

The last question relates to projects that are permitted. Sometimes projects go off to tender but for those that are permitted and might not have been tendered for, is there any oversight in the Department as to successfully seeing those projects through? I have come across a couple of examples. I will not name the school but I know of one school that was permitted an autism spectrum disorder, ASD, class in 2017 which is still not built in 2023. It is still nowhere near being built. There is actually a planning constraint on one particular school. Is there follow-through or oversight of those or, I suppose, is pressure put on boards of management to deliver the projects that were permitted?