Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

Given the fact that there are so many schools and competing demands, there has to be prioritisation. There is a need to prioritise, firstly, special education. We need to make sure we are providing not only sufficient places for this school term, but that we are forward planning. That is why we need to look at developing more special schools. We have built 16 new schools in the past number of years, two of which are opening this week, but we did not build any for many years before that, so we need to continue to prioritise and invest in special schools, special education provision, new classrooms and additional accommodation. Where there is an actual demand for school places where they do not currently exist, we have to prioritise that.

In certain demographic areas where there is that demographic increase, be they in my county of Meath or in Kildare, Wicklow or, of course, Dublin and other counties, we have to be able to respond and cater to it. While we have to prioritise providing physical infrastructure for people where it does not exist, that is not to say that other projects will not be able to progress at different stages. There will be that prioritisation based on the fact that we have a budget, though. We are not going to be able to progress everything at the same time or maybe in the timeline that some people would like.

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