Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge the remarks of Deputy Whitmore in the short response. In truth, the Temple Carrig Secondary School, Greystones project is at stage 1, which is preliminary design. In addition, regarding the Kilcoole area, I mentioned the project at stage 2B. That is early stages, and it is not possible to put a timescale on the finalisation of that project or either of those projects at this stage. I do not have an exact date. It would not be possible to give a date on those yet because it has not gone through the tender process.

I also want to thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to relay the position regarding Greystones. I will personally speak to the Minister, Deputy Foley, on this matter because I am here on her behalf tonight. As I have outlined, there is a strong pipeline of projects, and these are delivering significant additional capacity. I take the point the Deputy has made about the school that is already over capacity. Some of the prefabs are already accounted for with regard to dealing with that area. The Department has been in contact with the schools and patrons, and they are aware of the evolving situation with respect to first year places for 2024. We are reliant on getting clear data from the schools in a prompt manner, which the Department wants to verify. Sometimes, and I know this from my own area in Portlaoise, when there is a situation like this, parents apply to a number of schools and there can be a duplication of applications. That needs to be examined on a school-by-school basis. I can understand why parents do that but sometimes it can lead to a greater number of applications than there are physically children or pupils in order to go ahead.

On that basis, the Department is monitoring the data very carefully and I can only reiterate the Minister's commitment that there will be a place for everybody in the Greystones area in September 2024.

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