Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter and giving me an opportunity to outline to the House the current position in regard to the funding of the Piper's Hill Educational Campus in Naas, County Kildare. As the Deputy is aware, there has been a significant increase in the number of schoolgoing children in the country in recent years. My Department is forecasting that this will increase further in the coming years. Naas is one of the areas identified by the Department as experiencing a rapid growth in demand for new school accommodation. In this context, Kildare VEC took the initiative and developed a new educational campus at Piper's Hill, including a new 1,000-pupil post-primary school building, a physical education hall, a building for Gaelscoil Nás na Ríogh and a headquarters building for the Irish Vocational Education Association. In time, it will be the site of permanent buildings for Naas community national school and St. David's Church of Ireland national school. As the Deputy will be aware, the development of the campus has been highly successful to date. The development of the campus and the provision of additional post-primary school places ensured there was no accommodation crisis in Naas in recent years and all children in the catchment area had a place to go to school.

The development of the Piper's Hill educational campus did not follow the usual model of upfront Exchequer funding from the Department. Instead, the VEC funded the development of the post-primary school, the sports hall and the site infrastructure such as roads, etc. The Department funded the construction of the gaelscoil and the Irish Vocational Education Association headquarters. Kildare VEC funded its element of the project by entering into a contract for the disposal of an existing asset to the Superquinn group. This was done with the approval of the Department and my predecessors as Minister. Under the terms of the arrangement, Superquinn was supposed to acquire the site of the old vocational school on the Limerick Road in Naas, which was not large enough to accommodate a 1,000 pupil school. The VEC borrowed the funds to develop the new school, sports hall and site infrastructure on the strength of this contract for sale.

When the Superquinn group went into receivership last year, it became clear that the contract with the VEC would not be honoured. The VEC was left without the means to pay off its debt with the bank. Rather than allowing the VEC to continue to incur interest on this debt, I decided to make funds available to the VEC to settle the debt with the bank.

The VEC continues to retain the freehold on the old vocational school in Naas that was the subject of the contract for sale. It is being used as a permanent location for Gaelcholáiste Chill Dara, which has been able to vacate its previous rented premises to relocate in Naas, thus eliminating the previous rental bill on that premises and avoiding the need to acquire a greenfield site and develop a new school building for the gaelcholáiste. The VEC also retained the original deposit of 10% that was paid by Superquinn when the contract was signed. This was used as part of the Piper's Hill campus development. While it is regrettable that the original transaction was not completed, the fact remains that two post-primary schools are now located in permanent accommodation, while the Piper's Hill campus is an asset to the town of Naas and a key part of the educational infrastructure of the area.

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