Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank our guests for their presentations and briefing documents. I do not intend to be especially negative but as we are discussing this business of forward planning, essentially what we are hearing is there is nothing to see here and move on. All of us know the situation from different representations we have received. By way of example, one should never talk about policy based on a specific instance. A family moved to my constituency and they needed a school place for one child in third class. I could not find them one third class place all across east Waterford. In Tramore, a brand new school was built and an extension was added a year later. Therefore, people cannot convince me forward planning is happening when the Department needed to extend a brand new school. Similarly, I have been told there are no demographic pressures within Tramore to create new school places, yet I can see the houses, in their hundreds, going up. The analysis being done does not look at houses that will be completed in the very near future. That does not satisfy forward planning, as far as I am concerned.

Ms McNally mentioned there are 314 school planning areas and ten of them have been identified as being under pressure. Will she confirm whether the Department has committed to the ten places? Ms McNally probably has the information at her fingertips.