Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue. I empathise with him and his constituents. As a Kildare South TD, I know all too well the pressures his constituents in County Wicklow face around school provision and demographic growth. We suffer the same in the adjoining county of Kildare as people in Wicklow do. The Deputy has articulated those challenges in respect of Temple Carrig School and the Greystones area very well.

I issue this response on behalf of the Minister who is unfortunately not able to make it. However, it gives me the opportunity to set out for the House the position with regard to demand for post-primary spaces in Temple Carrig School and the wider Greystones area for September 2024 and onwards.

I assure the Deputy that the provision of school places to meet the needs of children and young people at primary and post-primary level, including children and young people with special educational needs, is an absolute priority for the Department of Education. Since 2018, and up to the end of October 2023, a total of €145 million has been invested in school infrastructure in County Wicklow. This significant capital investment includes a recently delivered major building project to expand St. David’s secondary school in Greystones. State-of-the-art, modern school accommodation for 750 pupils was provided at this school.

The Department of Education is currently progressing a major building project for Temple Carrig School in Greystones under the national development plan. Temple Carrig School in Greystones is also a co-educational school established in 2014, as the Deputy will be aware. A project is under way to provide accommodation at this school for 1,000 pupils, which is currently at stage 1, preliminary design stage. A project for four modular mainstream classrooms has also been approved. These classrooms are now on-site and the project is completed.

In line with the Department's demographic projections of post-primary school place requirements, there has been a continued growth in enrolments throughout many school planning areas in County Wicklow. In response, the Department is providing further significant additional post-primary capacity, including a new 1,000-pupil school for Greystones Community College. Greystones Community College was established in 2020 as a regional solution for the Kilcoole and Greystones area. The project to deliver this new school building is at stage 3, tender stage. The permanent building project will deliver a new 1,000 pupil post-primary school with accommodation, including four classrooms, for children with special educational needs. The project is being delivered under the Department’s design and build programme and is currently at tender stage. The invitation to tender issued in April 2023 as part of a bundle of projects issued to the Department's framework of design and build contracts. The tender process currently takes approximately eight to 12 months. Tender returns have been received and are currently being evaluated. Once a contractor has been appointed, it is anticipated that construction will commence shortly thereafter.

In addition to the above projects, there is also the existing school in the adjacent Kilcoole school planning area, Coláiste Chraobh Abhann, for which a major project has been approved to expand the school to 1,000 pupils. This project is currently at stage 2b and is being delivered by the National Development Finance Agency. The annual enrolment process for new junior infants at primary and new first years at post-primary is a very large-scale operation that is transacted at close to 4,000 schools throughout the country, involving some 140,000 pupils.

In the context of post-primary enrolment pressures at Greystones, the Department is aware of pressures for school places for the 2024-25 school year. A critical next step for the Department of Education is to establish the actual number of additional first-year places required for 2024 in order for an appropriate solution to be put in place. In that context, schools in a number of areas of enrolment pressure, including Greystones, have been requested to share data on applications for admissions. This data has been received by Department officials and is currently being analysed with a view to establishing the actual requirement for places. Preliminary assessments indicate that duplication of applications and applications from outside the local area are very much contributing to enrolment pressures in the town.

I have further details in the response that I will come back to in the supplementary answer.

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