Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for raising this matter.

I am taking this debate on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, and wish to apologise on behalf of the Minister who cannot be present due to a prior commitment. I will make sure to convey to him the matters raised in this debate.

St. Michael's House special school was established in 1982 and is located in a rented building with temporary accommodation in Hacketstown, Skerries, County Dublin. The Department is committed to providing a permanent accommodation solution, and in that regard a project to deliver a new school building for St. Michael’s House special school on a greenfield site has been included the Department’s six-year capital programme. It is planned to provide a new school building for St. Michael’s special school to accommodate a 14 classroom school, expandable to 16 classrooms, to include classes for pupils with mild general learning difficulties, autism spectrum disorder, multiple disabilities and severe and profound disabilities. The Department is working closely with Fingal County Council in accordance with the memorandum of understanding on the identification and acquisition of a suitable site to facilitate the school building project.

The site acquisition process for this school has been ongoing for some time. Initial efforts were focused on acquiring land in the vicinity of the school’s current location which was preferred by the school authorities. Efforts in that regard were unsuccessful and subsequently the current site option was identified. The acquisition process was paused for some time while the Department engaged with the school authorities regarding potential alternative accommodation which was available at the time. Based on the outcome of this engagement, the site acquisition process recently restarted and negotiations with the relevant landowner are at an advanced stage. I confirm that a potential permanent site option has been identified and is being progressed.

The Department, with the assistance of Fingal County Council, is engaging with the landowner. Department officials are working to clarify some technical issues on the development of the site and this assessment process is expected to be completed in approximately two weeks, assuming no issues arise. Once these technical queries have been clarified, agreement on the terms of the site acquisition can be finalised and it is anticipated that the conveyancing process can then be advanced by the respective solicitors.

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