Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I appreciate where the Deputy is coming from. Despite the fact that we are spending almost €500 million this year, stand-alone PE halls are still only a priority four. When one weighs up the needs throughout the country for classrooms, new schools, buildings for special schools, special units and so on, I cannot prioritise stand-alone sports halls any higher. We are building them in the context of new schools and major new extensions.

Equally, where there is any new major extension to primary schools, they get large general purpose areas. A number of schools had to sacrifice their GP room when there was a shortage of classrooms. As their needs are met with extra classrooms, such as the new scheme introduced this year of permanent accommodation where schools have applied for a permanent accommodation grant to add on an extra classroom, they will then be able to retrieve their GP room. For the moment I do not envisage being able to set aside money which would be to the detriment of schools getting classrooms.

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