Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reason that Ériu Community College is moving back is that there are 1,000 pupils moving out of the Mulhuddart-Tyrellstown area every day to attend other parts of the school. I appreciate the Deputy's point that other parts of the community are expanding and growing. The Department has to plan ahead looking at the data it has and is available. To plan for school provision, you have to look at the demographic data. It is divided into 314 different school areas from a range of sources. There is the CSO data, the child benefit data, school enrolment data as well as developments in the local authorities. The Deputy has outlined it is a young and growing population. This is taken into consideration when there is a new development and new schools are being looked at and, in particular, what area they should go into. It is on that basis that these decisions have been taken, but I am open to this because I know in the south of Meath in my home county there has been a massive growth in population. Where we need additional schools to those that have already been planned, we need to always keep these figures and projections under review. It will take time for this school to move to its new location, so the students the Deputy has mentioned will most likely serve their school time-----

See this speech in context