Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The legal advice is that one cannot make it a condition of the rezoning. That issue would have to be examined because a property right is involved. In fairness, there are local authorities, such as Fingal County Council, which are being extraordinarily helpful to us to ensure the Department does not end up paying large sums of money. There can be a programme through which community facilities are provided and that can link in with the developer's work. On the other side there are some developers who offer to make contributions towards the building of schools. In an area which will be a new town of 20,000 people, a developer said he would provide a four-teacher school which would not go far in meeting the need.

The Deputy's second question related to planning generally. A new group or patron is not allowed to set up a school in a scout hall. It must be able to show it can develop and grow within the site during the coming years. The area development plans and the commission on schools is one way of ensuring proper development and plans for an area. It is through that committee we have seen applications being made, following notification, public consultation, identification of the real need and temporary or permanent recognition, leading to the provision of a school in an area. That system has worked well, particularly in some of the new areas, and I have mentioned some of the new schools which have been provided as a result. There is also the development of gaelscoileanna and Educate Together so that planning for the future is being looked at in many different ways and not just from the point of view of demographics. The difficulty is not that we do not have school buildings but that some happen to be in the wrong places.

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