Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)

My Topical Issue relates to Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire and its new school building on Dominick Street in Dublin 1. I stood with Government Ministers and representatives from the school two and a half years ago when the sod was turned in June 2023. The school was supposed to be open in June 2025, but instead we have an empty building site. The Department of education terminated the contract for building works on 24 June 2025. The school community is now about to move to yet another temporary building, having already spent two decades in a temporary dilapidated building. We have zero information about what is happening with the new school building. Four months on from the termination of that contract, what is the Department of education and the Minister of State's plan B? What is the plan to get this long-awaited school built? Will the Department go out to tender? How long will that take? Is the Department confident that it is going to be able to get another contractor in to take up where the original contractor left off? Let us remember that this is a job that is just weeks away from coming to roof level.

With regard to the Department’s role in all of this, it brought in a project manager last year to great fanfare. We were told that KSNPM would sort out all the issues, including the design, the delays and all of that. We are now 16 months on and we have an empty building site. There are serious questions about the money the Department is paying to project managers and everyone else in this project because we have no resolution, despite these project managers being brought in. There is still no solution in sight.

Why was the contract terminated? We have to understand the reasons for the termination, particularly with regard to the cost. Was cost the reason? If it was cost related, as I understand it, the cost this year stood somewhere between €21 million and €25 million. If we go back out to tender again, however, the Department will have little change from €30 million for this school building, which would probably make it one of the most expensive school buildings in the State. The reason for that is because of the mess and incompetence within the Department. There are serious questions for Department officials in how they have handled this. In advance of the election last year, Department officials sat around a table with members of the board of management, parents and elected representatives.

One official in particular, Hubert Loftus, gave a commitment that there would be a report at the end of the year updating the school community about the school building. That report never came. We do not even know if it was ever produced. I have contacted the officials directly seeking that information and we have heard nothing back. We have written to the Minister seeking a meeting about these issues and we have heard nothing back. Notwithstanding the lack of information, what we do know is that this school has been treated disgracefully. Solemn promises were made in November 2023 after those horrendous events, that this long-awaited building would be built. Instead, I have reason to believe that no official from the Department has ever set foot on that building site after the works commenced, even though it is only a five minute walk from the Department of Education and Youth in Marlborough Street.

Will there be a new tender for the completion of the works in Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire? What is the timeline of that tender? When does the Department expect that the school community, the staff, parents and pupils, will get their new school building?

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