Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is a tremendous school that provides a tremendous quality of education, which is reflected in the pupils' achievements. It has exceptionally good staff and management. However, it has been forced to live with substandard accommodation for the past 18 or 19 years of its existence. It has had a permanent upper building, which was delivered in 2005, but it has worked out of prefabs for the lower building since 2001. These were condemned by the Department. I welcome the work done over the summer to bring them up to a better standard, but patience has long run out around the delivery of the permanent new building. It was approved in 2014, but here we are in 2019 and we are only at the preliminary stages. The Minister and the Department made a commitment in May that they hoped that planning permission would be applied for in September or October. It is November and this has not happened yet. The timelines have slipped and the Minister is now speaking about a revised stage 2A proposal by the end of the year. We cannot afford any further slippage in the timelines on this. It must move through the processes promptly. I call on the Minister to ensure that this happens and that there are no further delays or slippage as we have seen in recent months. Will the Minister outline more clearly the exact timelines for the completion of the stage 2A proposal, moving to planning and then tender for construction?

See this speech in context