Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)

My Department is acutely aware of the need for additional permanent school accommodation in the general Midleton area. As the Deputy will be aware, Midleton has been identified by the Department's forward planning unit as one of the areas projected to undergo significant increases in educational demand in the coming years.

To this end, the Department is currently in the process of acquiring a six acre site which is zoned for educational use.

As part of the contract exchange, a planning application for an educational campus of two 16 classroom schools was submitted to Cork County Council in June of this year. The purpose of this application is to ensure that the site to be purchased will be deemed suitable for land usage purposes to accommodate two schools. The planning authority has requested further information from my Department and a response is being co-ordinated by my officials. As part of framing this response, my officials recently met with the vendor to discuss aspects of the request for further information, which included information relating to traffic management issues. My officials will be meeting with the planning authority in the coming week to discuss and address their concerns. Pending the outcome of the planning decision, the Deputy will appreciate that I am not in a position to say definitively whether both of the schools referred to by him will be housed on the proposed site. However, should the application be successful, it is my intention that priority will be accorded to the two schools referred to in the Deputy's question.

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