Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State for taking this question. I want to raise the issue of the proposed amalgamation of Shanbally and Ringaskiddy national schools in County Cork. They are two existing schools in older buildings. Ringaskiddy has a school population of approximately 60 students and Shanbally is larger with approximately 199 students. The proposed amalgamation has been on the cards for a decade and a half at this stage. Unfortunately, despite this long time it is at the earliest possible stage, namely pre-stage 1 of the school building programme.

There are emergency needs in these schools. I have had the good fortune of being able to visit these schools in my time. I most recently visited Shanbally, the larger of the two schools. Of the nine classrooms in the school, six are prefabs. Many of the prefabs are over ten years old and are in an appalling condition. I witnessed it myself. Floors are collapsing and ceilings are bulging with dampness. There are health and safety issues, in that ceilings could collapse on students. There is dampness and mould. I could go on. There are significant issues with electrical trip switches, which are tripping because of the dampness in the school. There is a chronic need to develop the new school so that the students can get out of these older and dilapidated buildings.

As I said, despite the time involved, the project is at the earliest stage of the school building programme. There is deep frustration locally about the slowness of the process. This has been a long running process. A site was identified a number of years ago. Unfortunately, the site had to be acquired for the development of the M28 motorway. That was one setback. A new site was identified and is fully in place. Everything is now ready to go in terms of developing the new schools.

Given the issues I outlined earlier with the condition of the buildings, the principals of the schools have had to fight tooth and nail is to get emergency funding to carry out works. They have been put through the wringer in trying to get funding to carry out works for roof repairs and to address dampness and other safety issues in school buildings. It is simply not good enough in this day and age that such a number of children are being educated in these facilities.

To be fair, the children receive a good standard of education. The principals and teachers in Ringaskiddy and Shanbally national schools are doing their level best to provide good levels of education. They are also doing their best with regard to special education and are certainly playing their part in providing places for students with additional needs. They need the school building programme to progress quickly and for this school project to be on a proper trajectory towards the delivery of a new school building.

I hope the Minister's response can give some hope to the communities, teachers, pupils and parents locally that the school building project will progress and they will see credible and substantive progress in the near future.

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