Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising his concerns on the matter. Obviously, it is critical from the perspective of the Department and of the Minister, Deputy Foley, that we do not just provide school places for the existing school-going children but also forward plan into the future as the Deputy correctly stated in his contribution. That is why the mechanisms by which we do our forward planning are used by the Department. For example, I mentioned the GIS earlier for the 314 school planning areas and that needs to be done.

I understand that there have been ongoing conversations with the patron bodies. We do not want any child to be without a school place in September, let alone the 100 children the Deputy mentioned. I understand how the Department will meet those capacity challenges. One of the ways of doing that is by accelerating the delivery of school building projects. There are 200 ongoing building projects and some of these will provide additional accommodation. They will also accelerate the delivery of small-scale projects which are currently at the preplanning stage. In addition, they will deploy prefabricated modular accommodation solutions to provide additional classroom capacity where it is required.

The Department can also rent available spaces within the community for use by schools. All these mechanisms will be used where necessary. There are three very strong post primary schools in east Cork: the Ballincollig school; the new post-primary Carrigtwohill community college - I acknowledge that a permanent building is still to be constructed; and the new post-primary school in the Cork south suburbs. I reassure the Deputy that I will take his concerns back to the Minister and ensure that every child in east Cork will have a secondary school place in September.

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