Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am taking this matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn. I thank the Deputy for raising it, as it provides me with an opportunity to outline to the House the Government's strategy for capital investment in education projects and to clarify the current position on the application for major capital funding from Presentation secondary school, Milltown, County Kerry.

As the Deputy is aware, the Department of Education and Skills is forecasting an increase of over 24,900 post-primary pupils by the start of the 2017-18 school year. In order to meet the needs of our growing population of schoolgoing children, the delivery of new schools, together with extension projects, will be the main focus for capital investment in the coming years.

As the Deputy may know, the school in question applied for an extension in 1996. It was assessed and assigned a band 2.2 rating. As part of the assessment process, a project is assigned a band rating under published prioritisation criteria for large-scale building projects. These criteria were devised following consultation with the education partners. A building project moves through the system commensurate with the band rating assigned to it. There are four band ratings overall, of which band 1 is the highest and band 4 the lowest.

Owing to the restricted nature of the site, the condition of the existing building and a revised long-term projected enrolment of 600 pupils, a new building on a new site was recommended. The trustees acquired a 2 ha site to facilitate the larger building project. The Department received confirmation from the Presentation Sisters that they had acquired the site on 18 June 2010. It is in that context that the building project for Presentation secondary school was included in the list of projects announced on 24 January 2011 to commence architectural planning. Officials from my Department's planning and building unit have recently finalised the schedules of accommodation which have been issued to the school.

My Department will continue to liaise with the school authorities in the context of progressing the project to the next stage of the architectural planning process. In the meantime, the school applied for temporary accommodation for the introduction of transition year from 2009 and was sanctioned an all-in grant of €49,437 in July 2009 to build two additional rooms. The school also applied for temporary accommodation for a general classroom for September 2010. Its application was approved and a devolved grant of €70,000 sanctioned.

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