Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the office of the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this important matter and the Minister for Education and Skills for attending to take it. I have no doubt that she has a list the length of her arm of people who want new schools and new school buildings and I imagine the pressure on her at the moment is severe. However, it would be wrong to fail to raise the issue of Athenry vocational school with the Minister today. The school has been promised a new school building for many years. While the Minister will probably tell me in her reply how much the process has moved on with the location of a site and work to purchase it, the matter has been going on for so long that there is great frustration among parents, students and many others in the Athenry hinterland. We have heard for so long how close we were to getting a new school. At one stage, it was believed that parents, pupils and teachers would walk through the front door of a brand new school on 1 September 2014. That certainly did not happen.

A great deal of good work has been done in the background, and I pay special tribute to Councillor Peter Feeney, who spent so much time trying to find the site for the new vocational school, but there is a great deal of frustration out there that this is not moving as quickly as it should. We are getting a lot of people saying it is very close or nearly there, but no one is willing to say what the timeline is, when the land will be purchased, when building will commence and when the school will move in. After meeting two weeks ago with the principal and some of the teachers, I note that what we really want today are answers. A further consideration is that in a town the size of Athenry, the Presentation school and the gaelscoil are also looking for new buildings. The CSO figures show that Athenry is a booming town, the population of which continues to grow. Apple is going to make a massive investment in the next year. This is an area that is going places, but Athenry is short of the new schools it desperately needs. We must start to set out a very clear plan for the town of Athenry's building programmes and when they will start. We must move away from hearsay and maybes. The site is there and we need it to be purchased. We need to know when it will be purchased and when building will start. That is the only way to alleviate the frustration that parents and students face.

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