Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the positive things we have seen under this Government has been investment in education. As the Minister of State outlined in response to the previous matter, we have seen new special schools. In my own area, there have been investments in new schools such as St. Aidan's secondary school and the Dominican secondary school. However, with education there is always a list of asks, and that is certainly the case in the Dublin 9 and Dublin 11 area. A number of schools have approached me about the current school building programme. I will outline some of those cases. There might be an opportunity for the Department to come back to me on the specifics.

The Holy Spirit Girls National School in Ballymun was one of the schools that opted early for the addition of an ASD class. We wanted more schools to do that. As we know, many schools in DEIS areas have numerous other challenges and are worried - "reluctant" might be the wrong word - about taking on an additional challenge when they already have so much on their plate. Holy Spirit Girls National School is not one of them. In 2021, the SENO and the school started to work together.

Additional accommodation is going in on that site and, as part of that project, a new canopy and play equipment were included. Unfortunately, out of the blue last November, these two elements of the project were removed. Cost was cited as the issue.

One might think that a canopy and play equipment are superfluous or nice-to-haves but they are a really important part of the overall plan in terms of managing the space and the flow of children between the new facility and the main school maximising the space that is available and giving children in the ASD class and children across the whole school use of the yard. The school is particularly disappointed. It welcomed when it was put on the framework because it felt that might speed it up but here we are at the very last minute and it is not complete.

One of the other two schools I referenced are Clonturk College where parents have campaigned for a long time. It is an Educate Together second-level school. Temporary buildings have gone in but we want to see a permanent school. The ETB and Educate Together are both involved and there are plans for another second-level school, so there will be two 1,000-pupil schools. This shows the need in the Santry area given the recent increase in population.

The third school is Gaelscoil Uí Earcáin, which is another school that adopted an ASD class. It is a really old school building. It is the school I went to when it was De La Salle Primary School. It has since been taken over by An Foras Pátrúnachta. Again, after a lot of campaigning, an entirely new school building will be given to that school but while we are doing that, it makes sense to put in place the supports we know are needed. Examples include a preparation room where hot school meals can be completed and a nurture room. Many of the trauma-informed reports talk about how nurture rooms play a really important role. Another example is space for home-school liaison and school completion staff within the building. When we are doing these large projects, we need to find a way to future-proof what is required. I appreciate I have thrown a lot at the Minister of State in regard to three issues. I would ask her to look at those details and come back to me.

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