Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I congratulate the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, on his new position. Owing to his family contacts, he is very familiar with the constituency of Laois-Offaly and perhaps Kolbe Special School, Portlaoise. I hope he will take a special interest in the school.

The reason I am raising the issue of this school, in particular, is that it is extraordinary. There are very few schools like it. When we talk about a special school, we all have ideas about what they entail. There are many special schools throughout the country. This particular school has 40 students under the age of 18 who have severe and profound intellectual disabilities. Each child has a severe learning difficulty. This makes the school an outlier by comparison with normal schools in terms of the difficulties the students encounter. People, even locals in County Laois, do not understand that each student has a profound intellectual disability and a severe learning difficulty and that all the children are non-verbal. Practically the majority are in wheelchairs and are completely wheelchair bound. All have to be brought to the school in special adapted minibuses suited to wheelchairs. The Minister is getting the picture. There are only 40 students.

The school has been pleading for a new school building for the past 15 years. I want the Minister to give approval to appoint a design team. That is precisely where we need to be. The school is on a building list. The construction might happen sometime but unless there is a design team, nothing will happen. This is the critical next step that needs to be taken. The site has been identified. It is in HSE ownership and is adjacent to the current school but we need the design team. The accommodation schedule was discussed among the departmental officials in Tullamore and the board of management some time ago, in March 2017. There has not been a dicky bird since. Therefore, we need to move on to the appointment of a design team so further progress can be made.

Let me put Portlaoise in context and talk about the other schools. There are 5,000 people in primary and secondary schools in Portlaoise. In Kolbe school, there are 40, which is fewer than 1% of the total. The students in question are the most disadvantaged in the entire region. Kolbe school is the only school in the town that has not had a new school building in the past ten or 15 years. Every other school in the town has benefited. By comparison with any other town, Portlaoise has the most modern suite of primary and secondary schools. Despite this, the Department is neglecting the children who are most vulnerable and most in need. Therefore, we need a design team to be appointed.

I visited the school last week. I met the chairman of the board of management and the principal. I met every staff member and every child. No child could speak to me. None was able to utter a word. Many of them had severe difficulties. Some of them had to sleep. Owing to their profound difficulties, they are not even capable of sitting up in a wheelchair for the few hours they spend in the school building every day. These are very special cases. I cannot understand how their parents cope with the difficulties they face when they take the children home. Of course, it is a life-changing experience for all the families. Since the children are coming from a wide catchment area and are not just from the town, the parents can never meet for a parents' meeting. They cannot leave their children at home with somebody else to mind them for two or three hours. They can hardly ever get together because they are all isolated by their own work. They have not had the parent power one would have in other schools. I ask the Minister to appoint a design team for Kolbe school in Portlaoise.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta as ucht an t-ábhar seo a ardú. I thank the Deputy for raising this and for his kind words at the beginning. I am familiar with the two counties - King's county and Queen's county.

Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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Do not say that, please.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I will obviously take a very special interest in the issue raised. These are important matters in terms of educational inclusion. I thank the Deputy for raising them.

Kolbe Special School, which is under the patronage of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary Services, caters for students with severe to profound general learning disabilities. The school provides education for children aged between four years and 18 years. The school's most recent enrolment data indicate that there are 39 pupils enrolled for the 2017-2018 school year. The staffing allocation for the current school year includes a principal, seven teaching posts and 16 special needs assistants.

As the Deputy is aware, a building project, which involves the construction of a replacement school building for Kolbe Special School, is included in my Department's six-year construction programme. This school building project, which will comprise a single-storey building of 2,265 sq. m will provide a schedule of accommodation to include eight classrooms, a general purpose room, a library and resource area, a woodwork and art room, an exercise-therapy room and various ancillary spaces.

The schedule of accommodation for the new school was developed in consultation with the National Council for Special Education. The schedule has been issued to the school authorities and has been favourably received. To facilitate the development of the proposed new school, my Department has acquired a 1.433 ha site from the Health Service Executive at St. Fintan's, Portlaoise, County Laois, for the project. My Department is currently finalising the development of the project brief with a view to progressing the project into architectural planning at an early stage. As an interim arrangement, my Department gave approval to Kolbe Special School in late February 2018 for the provision of a temporary classroom to meet the growing current needs at the school.

Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for his reply. I hope he is at the cusp of making some progress. He said he hopes to progress the project to architectural planning at an early stage. I have given a commitment to the parents and the teachers. I will be back to the Minister every month about this issue. I ask him to get the work started. Even when it is started, it will have to go through the planning and tendering processes. Therefore, it is still a long way off. I ask the Minister to allow the school to proceed to architectural planning as quickly as possible.

As the Minister just mentioned, he has sanctioned approval for another prefab. Five of the seven classrooms in the school are now prefabs. They are for children with the most profound intellectual disabilities in the country.

The school site is extraordinary in that the HSE owns the site, the Muiriosa Foundation owns the school buildings and the Department owns the five prefabs on the site, so it is a complete mixum-gatherum. Nevertheless, the Department must take ownership of this project.

I visited the school with the chairman of the board of management and the principal. Since September the school has lost its sensory room to facilitate a class. The pupils with autism cannot use the physical education hall because of over-stimulation due to people going through it. If one understands the nature of the profound disabilities involved one can understand why that is the case. The pupils need absolute quiet. We had to tiptoe in and out of many of the rooms last week lest we upset the children. The corridor to the nurse's room is cluttered with equipment, making access to the room difficult. In fact, there are two nurses on the staff, paid by the Muiriosa Foundation. That indicates the type of school we are discussing. There are 40 pupils in the school and the full complement of teachers and SNAs, but when it is necessary to have two nurses on the staff it shows what a special case it is.

As I said, there are 5,000 children in great new schools in Portlaoise, aside from the couple that are being examined due to the difficulty that has arisen in recent days with school buildings. The St. Francis Special School will have a site for building soon and another secondary school is getting a new site. However, these 40 children are being left in limbo in the meantime and I urge the Minister to move on this. I am not here to fight but to plead on behalf of those children, their parents and the staff.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I appreciate the Deputy's conviction on this. He has been to the school and met the students and the teachers individually. The most vulnerable people one will meet are people who cannot communicate or speak so I understand the seriousness of this issue. The project is at architectural planning stage and is in the six year bundle for 2016 to 2021. Obviously there are many pressures coming down the track with regard to which schools fit into the ten year capital plan, but the school is in the six year bundle and there is a commitment to it. However, I accept that there is anxiety on the part of parents and teachers to provide the infrastructure and a proper learning environment. Having read about the different elements of the new school it is clear they are looking forward to it.

I will take the Deputy's comments on board and speak to my officials about the current position and the next stage. It is at the design stage at present but given that the Deputy has highlighted the vulnerability of this group I will convey that to my officials.