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

I thank the Deputies for raising this issue. I can understand their concerns. I assure Deputy Fiona O'Loughlin that decisions on the location of schools are not political. Such decisions are not made by Ministers but by the Department. Every one of the 314 planning areas is treated in the same fashion. Areas are evaluated fairly against the demographic profiles available which are based on existing child benefit payments, school enrolments and local authority plans for housing developments. Decisions are based on the best available information and every area is treated equally.

There are five schools that have projects in the Department's plan for the next six years and that forms the background to the assessment of needs that has occurred. I can understand the Deputies' concerns about St. Paul's in Monasterevin and know that the Ceann Comhairle shares them. It has been in the six-year programme and is currently at stage 2b, detailed design stage, where the planning applications, fire certificates, disability access certificates and so on are provided. The design team submitted its completed stage 2b report on 10 April and it is envisaged that the review of same will be completed by the end of April. In February the Department wrote to the school and the design team to give them an outline of the projected timeframe because it was acutely aware of the concern that the project should be subject to no further delays. It outlined that the pre-qualification element normally took eight to 12 weeks and explained the steps required to ensure the school would be a near zero energy building. This will be followed by progression to the tender stage which normally takes between seven and eight months. The Department has projected that construction will commence in the third quarter of 2019. In response to Deputy Martin Heydon's query, I can confirm that if the design team can deliver the project to proceed to construction at an earlier time, the Department will re-profile accordingly.

The Department is in the process of acquiring a site at Moore Abbey, Monasterevin. Agreement in principle was achieved in April 2013, but the vendor insisted on full planning permission being obtained prior to the sale being completed. Full planning permission was secured in July 2017 and the current state of play is that the Chief State Solicitor's office is working with the landowners' legal representative with a view to concluding the conveyancing. The Department is absolutely committed to completion of the school.

As regards the project at St. Conleth's community college in Newbridge, builders are on site and student intake is due to being in September.

The Athy College project has been devolved to Kildare-Wicklow Education and Training Board. The delivery of that building project will increase the capacity at the school by 600 pupils, with a long-term projected enrolment of 1,000. The Cross and Passion secondary school in Kilcullen is progressing. A technical site visit has been undertaken at that site. The delivery of this project will increase the capacity at the school by 200 pupil places. It is at project brief stage. The project at Patrician College in Newbridge is also at project brief stage. A site visit to the school has been undertaken. The Department will be in contact with that school in this regard. When the project is complete, it will provide capacity for approximately 900 students. It is against that background that I understand the Department has assessed that 1,700 additional school places are planned to be delivered as I have set out. The Department expects that there will also be some growth in the Kildare town planning area. It anticipates that it will be possible to meet the level of demand there by extending the capacity of existing provision. These assessments are kept under continuous review by the planning section of my Department. That is the basis on which the decision was made by the Department. Obviously, the data on which that decision was based is objective and assembled from independent sources.

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