Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

From 2003 to 2012, the school enrolment has doubled, reaching 380. Since last September, 81 pupils have joined that school, the largest enrolment ever. There has been massive expenditure on temporary accommodation and it is now at the stage were some of the prefabs need to be replaced with additional accommodation. The project was included, as the Minister knows, in the 2011 school building programme and was at early architectural planning stage. What I and the local community want is that this project would proceed through the next stage.

The Minister was with us in Virginia. Additional permanent accommodation has been provided at all local second level schools and I was very active in support of those projects. As we all know, because of the growth of population, the pressure comes on the primary school sector in terms of accommodation earlier than on the second level sector. On a further point, 77% of the fifth and sixth class pupils in St. Mary's were born outside the parish.

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