Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for raising this issue. The school is successful and no one doubts its quality. As Deputy Brendan Smith stated, it saw a dramatic increase in enrolments.

I have examined the history of the project. To be fair, the delay has been for good reason, in that the board of management requested the addition of five permanent classrooms, increasing the school's size from 21 classrooms. This meant that the design needed to be amended and a fresh planning application had to be obtained, given that the floor area was increasing to 5,300 sq. m. A replacement consultant mechanical and electrical engineer also had to be appointed to the design team.

The school raised the issue of how the children would be decanted. The original plan would have entailed two phases and the decant would not have been on the same scale, but there will now be a total decant of the school. A design for that has been approved and will form part of the overall contract.

The Department is awaiting the stage 2B submission from the school. Moving to that detailed design stage was approved in January. The Department must receive and assess the submission. Deputy Brendan Smith suggested that contractors be pre-qualified before that point. I will ask my Department whether that is feasible, but I imagine that the design would have to be defined before pre-qualification could occur. Perhaps that is not the case, but I will check it out for the Deputy.

As soon as the school's submission is received, we will attempt to move on it as quickly as possible. The process requires departmental evaluation and its various elements have to be completed so as to ensure the design will deliver as intended, but I assure the Deputies that the Department will assign considerable priority to this project in view of the school's value and the urgency to which they have drawn my attention.

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