Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the Minister of State. I know that the Minister for Education is not available, but the Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne, is my constituency colleague and the Minister's party colleague. I know he is familiar with this issue, but I will lay out some of the detail here. We need to discuss the need to secure the future of the site and buildings of Clonalvy national school. This was a national school in rural County Meath that was closed in 2019. It is important to say it was not closed due to a natural lack of demand or need or lack of children of school-going age in the area. There were artificial reasons. The demand is there for a primary school. It was there and it still is there.

My understanding is that the diocese divested of the school in February 2022. The Minister of State might confirm that. I have a concern about the nature of the pre-closure consultation by the diocese or by the Department. My sense in all of this is there was never support to maintain the status quoor to return to the status quobefore 2019. However, there was always, in my opinion, the opportunity if the right proposition was put forward for the continuation of a primary school. There is a lack of diversity in the area generally in terms of patronage. It is now the case that the school is on the open market. It is for sale. A proposal was made after some time from the community after significant with ourselves as public representatives and particularly within the community. They have confirmed that the Louth and Meath education and training board, LMETB, is interested in acquiring the site for a community national school and an education campus. I think there is huge potential there.

I attended a public meeting - the Minister of State sent his apologies - that was very well attended. The demand is there. People are interested. They will avail of it. The LMETB as a patron is confident that it would make a success of this. It has done similarly elsewhere. The question is how to join those pieces together with the Department and the Minister. I believe the Minister and the Department need to lead on this. Is it a case of a sale or a transfer? What will the nature of the transaction be? Ultimately, it is important that action happens quickly. Time is of the essence here. The site and buildings are for sale. The price is probably going up day by day. It is important that we have action on this.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I want to thank Deputy O’Rourke for raising this issue. As he rightly said, I am very familiar with it. I did give apologies to a public meeting that I could not attend last year. I fully support the Deputy’s proposal. I was at a public meeting three years ago when I put forward the exact same proposal. I tried to get action on it then. Unfortunately, people were not listening at that time, when the school was open. At that time, it could have been saved. It is a disgrace that it was allowed to close. I completely agree with Deputy O’Rourke.

St. Finian's national school at Clonalvy is a former national school which closed on the basis that no pupils were enrolled for the 2019-20 school year. The Bishop of Meath took that decision at that time. If I may be honest, this is a pattern that I fear in other areas where there are two or three schools in a parish, one becomes the dominant or popular school and pupils start to peel away from the other school. That puts pressure on the school that pupils have peeled away from. That is exactly what happened in Clonalvy. People started moving to the other school in the parish in Ardcath, which extended its buildings. There are also other schools close by in Naul. I see that happening in other areas too and I am very concerned about it. The problem is that I do not see the church’s patrons dividing the catchments within parishes to protect all the schools. The Department of Education tends not to deal with those issues at that grassroots level. It is really left to boards and management. However, we all need to keep an eye on this. As the Deputy rightly said, St. Finian’s National School is not in the ownership of the Department. On that basis, the Department accepted the termination of a small charging lease, which dated from 1953 in respect of the former school property. I do not have further details on that.

The Government and the Department divides the country into 314 school planning areas to try to plan for school demands. To be fair, that has been working much better in recent years. Project Ireland 2040 also has population and housing targets. They inform the Department’s projections of school place requirements. At national level, primary enrolments peaked in 2018 and are forecast to decline overall by 20% in the next ten years, despite overall population growth. However, there will of course be local variations. We all know that. Indeed, the arrival of Ukrainian children has added to the pressure on school places. It has added to primary school places and has allowed for more teachers to be employed in certain areas.

Clonalvy, as it happens, is in the Ashbourne school planning area. The Department’s most recent demographic projections indicate a decline in primary enrolments in that planning area over the next ten to 15 years. This is on the basis that the national and local plans are looking towards Drogheda, Dunboyne and Navan as areas of population growth. The village, as we know, is close to the Balbriggan school planning area and to Stamullen. Again, the forecasts for that are similar.

In the school planning area of Ashbourne, for example, which I know is not directly adjacent to Clonalvy but it is part of the planning area, new schools are being opened to cater for demand. The Department will continue to keep the primary school place requirements in the area under review. This will be informed by current and planned residential development, the housing and population targets and the enrolment of children from Ukraine. The Department engages with a range of stakeholders in this respect. I personally undertake to work with the Deputy on this, because I think the school should not have closed. There was an opportunity three or four years to keep it open. I thought it was a perfect candidate for divestment from the Church. At the time, I did not seem to be getting interest in that.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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I know the Department prepared some notes for the Minister of State on this topical issue. That is the bit I am hanging on for.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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The official script.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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Exactly, yes. The mood music is not great. It says that it will keep the demand under review and it mentions the potential implications of incoming Ukrainian refugees. The Minister of State knows that time is of the essence in this. If we are going to do something, it cannot be a case that we keep it under review. It will either happen or it will not. If it is going to happen it needs to happen soon.

We need to see something from the Minister and the Department. I wrote to the Minister seeking an engagement with local Deputies. I will put on record my commendation of the local community, especially Mr. Mick Reilly and Ms Patricia Rogers from the Ardcath Clonalvy Heritage Society and the Clonalvy Revival Programme. It is clear that this can be a success story. It is only a matter of whether the will is there. There are details to be worked out and technicalities. If people want to hide behind those technicalities they can, but I firmly believe if there is a will to make this happen, it can be a success story. All the ingredients are there in the community and the education system locally. The Minister of State knows the potential of it. I am available at any time, day or night, to play whatever helpful role I can in this regard but time is of the essence. I ask him to take that back to the Minister and update us as best he can on what the next steps are as the Minister of Sate understands them. I cannot say it any clearer than that. Time is of the essence. We need the Minister and the Department to lead on this.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for mentioning the Ardcath group. I had good engagements with Mr. Mick Reilly, who I have known for a long time. I will engage with the Minister next week and will inform the Deputy in advance of that. We need to work on this together. It is something that can happen. There are things going against it because the school is closed. It is for sale so, presumably, money is being sought. It is a lightly populated area but has major potential for multi-denominational education. It is in the Ashbourne planning area but it is not very close to multi-denominational school. Special education is another potentiality because, quite frankly, we are looking for premises for special education schools. I undertake to work with the Deputy and the entire committee. I again thank him for raising the matter. We will see what potentialities come from the Department of Education next week. I have discussed this with the Minister for Education. I have no doubt we will all do the same next week.