Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter, as it provides me with the opportunity to clarify the position of the application for major capital funding from the St. Thomas' junior and Scoil Áine senior national schools in Lucan. I am somewhat familiar with the issue, as it has been raised with me a number of times by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald, and other Government colleagues in the area.

St. Thomas' and Scoil Áine are junior and senior primary schools, respectively, catering for both boys and girls operating under the patronage of the Catholic bishop of Dublin. The St. Thomas' junior school has been in operation since 1976, with Scoil Áine opening in 1980. Enrolments at St. Thomas' for the school year 2012-13 amounted to 514 pupils, an increase of 8% over the past five years. Enrolments at Scoil Áine for the same school year amounted to 531 pupils, an increase of 6% over the past five years. Since last September, St. Thomas' has had a principal plus 18 mainstream teaching posts and Scoil Áine has had a principal plus 19 mainstream teaching posts. There is no question but that these are significant learning institutions in a densely populated part of Dublin city.

The brief for the major building project is to provide two 20-classroom schools and appropriate ancillary accommodation, including general purpose rooms. This is to be provided on the current school site. The design team for the project was appointed in March 2012. The project is at an early stage of architectural planning. Stage 1 was approved in May 2013 and the boards of management and their design team were authorised to proceed to complete stage 2A, which involves developing the more detailed design of the schools. The stage 2A report is nearing completion and a date is being finalised between my Department's officials, the boards of management and their design team to hold a stage 2A stakeholders meeting. Thereafter, and assuming no other issues arise, the project will be progressed to stage 2B, which is the final design stage of the architectural planning process and includes statutory applications along with completion of the tender documents.

The Deputy will be aware that 28 additional projects not previously included in the five-year construction programme were authorised to progress to construction under the jobs and investment package announced last July. This was made possible by the allocation of an additional €50 million for my Department's capital programme. All of these projects had secured planning permission and were nearing completion of stage 2B. In other words, they were very close to beginning construction. At the time, it was appropriate that they be included as additional projects. However, the project for St. Thomas' and Scoil Áine was not at a sufficiently advanced stage of architectural planning to be considered for inclusion at the time. The project remains available to be considered for progression in that context should further funding become available.

Regarding temporary accommodation on site, a review of a number of the units at Scoil Áine took place in 2013 and a devolved grant of €200,000 was sanctioned to provide two new classrooms to replace some of the existing temporary units. My Department has no applications on hand for replacement temporary accommodation at either school. However, if there are prefabs in poor condition, it is open to the boards of management to submit applications for replacement accommodation in the interim.

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