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

The Department has listed the accommodation - I am sure this has been discussed with the school in detail - four mainstream classrooms, one general purpose room, two resource rooms, a staff room, office area, storage etc. The Department has to assess the school's need when it reaches the threshold for an additional teacher as a result of its enrolment. It has to weigh the accommodation with the pupils and weigh the fact that other schools are in decline and that there is not a need for additional space in the planning area. That is the difficulty. If there was need for the additional space, of course we would be saying it is a growing school and we should be applying additional space, but when there is not growth in pupil numbers across the catchment, these are the rules it has to apply to manage the capital resources to ensure that in every area there are enough places for all the children who will turn up in September. It is a constant balancing act and it has to apply these catchment rules to be equitable to all children.

I appreciate the concern and I will ask the Department to have a look at it. It is trying to apply in an equitable fashion the rules that it applies in every area. Where there are oversubscribed schools, we run into this problem frequently where a school will be very popular and is saying it needs more facilities but other schools have available space. That is the dilemma.

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