Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. To plan for school provision and analyse the relevant demographic data, the Department divides the country into 314 school planning areas and uses a geographical information system, GIS, using data from a range of sources, to identify where the pressure for school places throughout the country will arise. With this information, the Department carries out nationwide demographic exercises to determine where additional school accommodation is needed at primary and post-primary level. This information provides a degree of certainty in projecting demand in an area in future years.

Where an additional school place demand is identified, the need can be met by one or more of the following options, namely, utilising spare capacity in existing schools, expansion of existing schools or establishment of a new school. In that assessment of appropriate solutions, the Department considers a national inventory of school capacity that is completed by individual schools. When schools are providing their annual 30 September enrolment returns to the Department in respect of the primary online database for primary schools and post-primary online database for post-primary schools, they are now also requested to provide information in respect of overall demand for school places and available capacity within their schools. The compilation and analysis of this information at local, regional and national level through the Department's GIS is an important additional feature of the school planning process.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Department currently has a requirement to identify a permanent site to accommodate the 1,000-pupil capacity Galway Educate Together post-primary school that was established in 2019 to serve the Galway city and Oranmore school planning areas as a regional solution. The site identification exercise for this school requirement found there were no suitable available vacant school buildings that would meet the long-term accommodation needs of the new school. The Department did, as the Deputy has referenced, make progress on that.

The Department also has building projects at primary, post-primary and special schools across Galway city and county, including new school buildings for St. Joseph's College in Galway city, Scoil Chaitríona Junior and Senior Schools, Cuan na Gaillimhe Community National School, Rosedale Special School, Scoil Mhuire, Moycullen and St. Teresa's Special School, among others. There are also multiple large and small scale extension projects in train across the county.

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