Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I appreciate the sincerity with which he has put forward his views. I want to confirm that the Department has no issue with schools making arrangements with local communities, provided that does not in any way impinge upon the needs of the school at any given time. Therefore, it is important that negotiations around that are at a local level and, as I have outlined, with the property owners, trustees or whatever the case might be.

To be fair, and to the credit of schools across the country, an extraordinarily high number of schools are willing to do that and have engaged positively and proactively with local communities to ensure there is a sharing of resources that might be in the ownership of the school. As I said, specific guidelines are available to schools which might wish to consider doing that in the future.

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