James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of the Mercy Convent Primary School in Naas and to set out the sorry tale I have raised many times with the Minister, Deputy Foley. I want to put on record what has happened in this extremely frustrating situation. There are schools around the country, many in my own constituency, where boards of management, principals and staff are looking for a new-build project to be approved, to get funding or to advance. In this particular instance of the Mercy Convent school in Naas, there is a brand new building sitting idle on the school grounds.

What happened is that after all of the usual delays, lobbying and campaigning to get it off the ground, the project started in 2017. The building commenced and the school moved into prefabs next door to have a temporary location during the construction phase. Lo and behold, in 2020, everything ground to a halt because of a row with the contractor. That happens and it is part of construction life, unfortunately, but we are now four years on. The school is directly opposite my office in Naas and I have been on site with the principal, Cathal Ruane, who is doing a great job advocating for his school, the school community and the parents and staff. I have sat with him in his office and looked out of his prefab window at the brand new building that is co-located on the same site but is inaccessible to the students, staff or anybody else. Unfortunately, it remains a shell which has not been completed because of this dispute. It is understandable that a dispute can cause a delay of three or four months, but four years is really pushing it beyond the beyond.

In addition to the delay, the costs associated with that include the cost of security because the building site had to be secured and policed, the cost of maintenance because the shell had to be protected and windows, ceilings and roofs had to be protected and repaired in some cases, and the cost of renting prefabs because, as well as the new school building that has to be maintained, the temporary prefabs on the same site have to be maintained. There is also the cost of various rows with subcontractors, and while I will not go into all of them on the floor of the Dáil, I have had calls from various people involved about everything from the highest to the lowest level of the project with all kinds of allegations, such as tools being locked in, projects being left behind and scaffolding on site. It is a mess.

The school community and I, as the local TD, want to get this project advanced again. I hope this is the last time I have to raise it on the floor of the Dáil. We thought some good news had come through after I had been persistent on this issue last year. Stage 2B applications were received in March 2023, the tenders came back in July 2023 and a tender report issued in September 2023. At the time, I gave what I thought was the good news to the principal and the school community that things were moving on again. Everybody was relieved and thought that, maybe by September 2024, we would have some progress and we could even dream of it opening in September 2025 or September 2026. We are still there and we have not had any sight of it. I believe a letter of intent is needed to give effect to the next stage and to move the project on.

It is remarkable. This may be the only site of its kind in the country. I think it has cost €9 million to date but that does not include the cost of maintenance, security, renting prefabs or all the attendant costs. It is a brand-new school building that is lying idle, with children being taught daily in prefabs beside it. It is a Flann O’Brienesque or Kafkaesque, crazy situation that has to be addressed.

There is a need to inject urgency with the relevant officials, the Department or whoever else to issue that letter of intent. We need to move to the next stage and address this outrageous lacuna.

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