Joe Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I wish to speak about the urgent need for the Minister for Education and Science to address the serious delay in granting St. Mary's community school, Buttevant, County Cork, permission to build a new school to provide for an increase in student population after ten years delay. This is a major issue that I have been raising for some time.

The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, must expedite this decision by notifying the County Cork Vocational Education Committee of her approval for the new school. She must also make a public statement indicating that she has done so to assure increasingly disillusioned and frustrated people who have been waiting for movement on this important issue since 1997.

Hitherto, when I have attempted to raise this matter by way of a Dáil question or by seeking a special debate, I have been informed by the Minister that the progress of the project will be considered in the context of her Department's multi-annual school building and modernisation programme. However, like so many other school programmes, this programme is insufficient to meet the needs of St. Mary's community school and full funding must be granted for the new facilities that are required.

The population of north Cork in particular is growing at an astonishing rate. Increasing pressure is being placed on all public services, but especially on our schools, our hospitals and our transport infrastructure. It is not just Dublin and its expanding commuter belt that is experiencing such problems. For many years the failure to provide new school buildings and school places has been a major issue for Buttevant and the surrounding area. Buttevant already has a secondary school but, in the past ten years, it has had to make do with the existing building. Long-promised new facilities, such as a new school for St. Mary's, will be insufficient to meet the needs of the local community by the time they are delivered.

The Minister must act now. I am not prepared to listen to the same old excuses and for the project to be put on the long finger once again.

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