Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for selecting this urgent issue. I also thank the Minister for his attendance to discuss the delay in delivering the Holy Family national school in Mullingar. This is the third time I have raised this issue in the House. I have tabled dozens of parliamentary questions and attended numerous meetings going as far back as 2008. This week we were given a revised completion date for the ninth time. That school remains 82% complete on a site that is under-resourced. Subcontractors are walking off the site and windows are being removed. We have all this uncertainty and we are no further along. It is infuriating for staff, parents and everyone involved in the school.

There are 30 staff and 332 pupils from 276 families in a building constructed as a two-teacher school in 1942 with no ancillary services. That is what we are presiding over now in the 21st century. The staff are operating over three campuses: St. Loman's; the 1942 school; and St. Etchen's in Kinnegad. The 42 children just enrolled are spread over those three sites. Some of the most vulnerable children need early intervention and need a social setting that is secure and certain. We need clarity and certainty as to when the school can be delivered and whether the current contractor has the capacity to deliver the school. This cannot continue any longer.

We have had nine completion dates. The parish will carry out its 2020 enrolment for new students in January. The principal and staff will be asked to take on more students despite the situation that currently pertains.

There is one common denominator. I have seen replies to parliamentary questions about schools elsewhere in the country involving this contractor. There are persistent issues and he is consistently late. Many people have criticised the local authority. The local authority is not involved in the service delivery or project management of those other sites. There is a common denominator here.

The Minister needs to do everything he can. I acknowledge he has been exceptionally helpful. He visited the site and is trying to do everything in his power. We need to get a certain date that will be adhered to. If capacity is not there or for some other reason that date cannot be met, action needs to be taken. I know there is criticism in the community that this action should have been taken given that we have received nine different completion dates. The staff and principal in the school are unsung heroes and deserve a medal. The parents are experiencing manifest frustration. They have no certainty over the completion date, just a site that is 82% complete.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for the opportunity to update the House on the position with respect to Holy Family national school in Mullingar. The House will recall that there have been significant delays in the delivery of this project. These delays arose initially because of unforeseen ground conditions and other similar issues that can arise on any building project. However, in recent months, I have been disappointed that progress on site has been extremely slow and we are still not entirely clear as to why this has been the case. The most recent programme provided by the contractor for this project indicated a completion date of late October. There was an initial acceleration of activity on site at the time this programme was provided. However, I regret having to report to the House that neither the Department nor Westmeath County Council, to which the project has been devolved for delivery, is satisfied with how these works have progressed in recent weeks.

The House will be aware that a number of matters have been raised through the dispute resolution mechanisms of the public works contract in respect of this project, as would normally happen in major building projects. The resolution of these issues is now at a critical juncture. A meeting will take place later this week in that respect. This meeting will be attended by officials from Westmeath County Council, supported by its design team. Officials from my Department will also be in attendance. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the proactivity of Westmeath County Council and the design team in trying to move this forward.

Given this, I cannot get into detail on the matters that are the subject of this conciliation process except to say, in broad terms, that they are technical issues and the issue of delays. A revised programme is also being sought in that context and we also expect to get greater clarity on why the project has been so significantly delayed. I hope that these and all outstanding matters can be addressed through this process. I also hope that it will provide an outcome that we can be satisfied with. Such an outcome will be confidential. However, I hope that in finding a resolution to all these matters, there can then be no reason for the project not to move forward at pace.

It is of the greatest concern to me that the pupils, staff and school community of Holy Family national school are not yet in situin a school which was initially scheduled for completion in September 2018. However, I am thankful to the patron and school management of both Holy Family national school and St. Etchen's in Kinnegad who have gone out of their way to arrange for the provision of temporary school accommodation for the special needs pupils impacted on by the delays. We are also thankful to St. Loman's GAA Club for its assistance in providing extra classroom space for the pupils of Holy Family national school. It is hugely disappointing that it has been necessary to activate these contingency arrangements, but we remain hopeful they will only be needed for a short while.

Until then Westmeath County Council will continue to keep the school authority and patron body fully informed of progress on site. At the same time, officials from my Department will continue to liaise with the patron of Holy Family national school on contingency arrangements should the project be delayed further. I sincerely hope we will be in a position in the coming days to provide the Holy Family school authority with some further clarification on progress on site. More particularly, we hope progress from now on will be to everyone's satisfaction. I do enter a caveat because I have already stood in front of the Deputy when he raised this issue and outlined a timeframe. I understand the intensity of feeling in his community is palpable and has moved beyond frustration. I appeal to the contractor to meet the challenge head on. There are contractual obligations that I am not going to get into. I appeal at a human level to the people delivering the project to for one second feel the frustration and anger felt at so many false dawns in its delivery.

I again thank the Deputy for raising the issue. Not a week goes without him being on to me about it.

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his response. I note that a meeting is due to take place on Friday. We need absolute clarity at that meeting. This project cannot endure a further revised programme of works that the contractor will be unable to meet. Perhaps a hard decision has to be taken, but it has to be taken on Friday if we do not have certainty. I have read the long list of dates by which the school was to have been completed. They include September 2015, 2016 and 2018, October 2018, December 2018, and April, June and July 2019. This week we were told it would be signed off on in October and that in November students would move in. It is galling to drive by the site in the 21st century and see it being under-resourced. I drive by it every day and know that since the contractor signed the contract that it has been under-resourced. Even when blocks were being laid, there were not enough people available. There would not have been enough to build a 2,000 ft2 building on the site. That is why we are more than two and half years down the road since the contractor moved onto the site. It was to be a one-year, template-build model. My top political priority is to have the school delivered. I appeal to the Minister and his office to use every power available to them. Perhaps there is a global issue with procurement law that we need to consider. If a contractor is consistently behind and not meeting specified targets in the contract, he or she should not in any way be allowed to apply for other public contracts. We saw this happen recently when the HSE hired a contractor who had run into difficulties in delivering other contracts. We need a traffic light system ingrained in procurement law such that contractors can be excluded based on past performance and that if a procurement team excludes them, it will not lead to a court case.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I agree with the Deputy that the meeting on Friday is important. There should be a degree of honesty and cards put on the table because the community deserves nothing less than to find out whether it is happening. I will not say anything more about what may happen after the meeting. So many good groups and people are working on the project. I met them on site when the Deputy invited me to visit it. They all want the project to happen, but we live in the real world too and perhaps there are reasons it is not happening. However, honesty is required. I am making a personal appeal to the contractor to meet the community head-on for the first time and be as honest as possible. There have been too many false dawns and expectations have been heightened. It is an issue for the entire constituency and other Deputies have raised the issue here. I thank Deputy Peter Burke for keeping it alive. Let us see what happens on Friday and I hope that, with a degree of honesty, we will make progress.