Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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It is a rainy day, and on rainy days staff in Coolmine Community School in my constituency, Dublin West, have to set out between 40 and 50 plastic buckets across the school to deal with water flowing into corridors, classrooms, toilets and offices. That water flows from over 100 leaks in the roof of the school. Coolmine is a big school, with almost a thousand pupils, and has provided top-class education for students across Dublin 15 for decades. It is, however, an old school. The building is now over 50 years old and is literally falling apart. I have known this school well over many years and have had the opportunity to visit it twice in the past six months. On the second occasion, it was raining and I saw a teacher trying to divert a rivulet of water coming in through a classroom ceiling away from the electrics for the white screen in that classroom. That is thousands of euro worth of damage risked in just one classroom, and the same thing is happening all across the school. Beyond the health and safety concerns to which these conditions give rise, there is the disruption to education whereby teachers are distracted by having to manage the inflow of water, and, in particular, the disruption to the normal, everyday activities of the school. Almost 1,000 students walk the corridors of the school every 40 minutes, and they literally have to navigate an obstacle course between all the buckets on the floors. TDs come in here and overstate matters. I am not overstating this. Each of the corridors has five, six or seven buckets laid across it just to collect the water.

The school's management team, the principal and deputy principals, has been proactive and submitted an emergency works application for the roof in November. That is application No. 3484. They got a visit from the Department's emergency works team in March. The Department thought about it and then asked the school for a full survey. That full survey is in and now the school is waiting to hear back from the Department in terms of the outcome. The roof is still leaking. Leaving certificate examinations are taking place today, but someone is probably putting out buckets in Coolmine right now. The school has complied with all the Department's requests for documentation and has followed all the procedures for emergency works applications.

This is on the Department. The Department has not met its timelines in terms of the responses it has given to the school management team. The state of the roof in Coolmine is known to the Department and to the Minister, Deputy McEntee. The Minister visited the school in February of this year. She contacted me earlier. I know she cannot be here to address this matter directly, and I appreciate her contacting me. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, has some good news for the students in Coolmine, the teachers, the other staff and the parents. I do not want to hear about lengthy assessments. I do not want to hear that the school has a load of follow-ups to bring through. I do not want to hear about the school having to go back to a previous contractor. I want the Minister of State to confirm to me that the school's emergency works application, No. 3484, has been granted and that it will have the opportunity to go rapidly to tender, get this work done, or as much of it as can be done, over the summer holidays, and be ready for students coming back in September.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy O'Gorman for raising this issue. He has painted a pretty bleak picture of the conditions at Coolmine school, which, as he stated, is quite a large school of 1,000 pupils. It is very concerning and disappointing in this day and age, when we have seen the level of investment in education and in capital works in particular, that a secondary school is experiencing that level of leakage. I can see Deputy O'Gorman is going through his copy of my response. Unfortunately, I do not have an official confirmation in terms of a grant, but hopefully I can give him an update as to where the grant stands.

I can confirm that the Department of Education and Youth is in receipt of a current application from the school for funding under the emergency works scheme for roof works, namely to replace the roof due to water ingress issues. The purpose of the emergency works scheme is to provide funding specifically for unforeseen emergencies or to provide funding to facilitate inclusion and access for pupils with special needs. It does so by ensuring the availability of funding for urgent works to those schools that are in need of resources as a result of an emergency situation. An emergency is deemed to be a situation which poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or the environment which is sudden, unforeseen and requires immediate action and, in the case of a school, if not corrected would prevent the school or part thereof from opening. The emergency works scheme operates on the basis of a minimal scope of works required to address the emergency situation. The scheme is intended to remedy an emergency situation and usually provides an interim measure until a permanent solution can be delivered under the summer works scheme, which deals with upgrade works to schools.

The original application proposed a scope of works seeking to replace the entire roof, which would be deemed an upgrade and not a minimal scope of works. Owing to the relatively recent installation of the roof in question, the school was advised to revert to the original design team to remedy the situation in the first instance. The original contractor repaired the three original leaks on foot of a leak detection test carried out in 2022. However, the condition of the roof had deteriorated further since the time of that test and water ingress issues persisted, as the Deputy has outlined.

On 19 March 2025, the Department Education and Youth conducted a site visit to assess the issues at play. The Department advised the school to obtain a new leak detection test. This report was received by the Department in the past two weeks and is undergoing technical review. Once this review has been completed, the emergency works team will engage with the principal of the school in respect of next steps.

As the Deputy may be aware, the Minister recently announced details of the climate action summer works scheme for 2026 onwards. The purpose of this scheme is to devolve funding to individual school authorities to undertake small-scale building works which ideally can be carried out during the summer months or at other times that avoid disrupting the operation of the school. The scheme will operate on a multi-annual basis for a number of categories, which could include the provision or upgrade of roofs. The new scheme opened for applications in early May 2025 and all applications must be received by this Department by 5.30 p.m. on 30 June 2025, when the applications window will close. Full details of the new scheme, including the circular and guidance documents for schools, can be found on the Department's website.

To come back to the immediacy of the Deputy's question and the urgency of the turnaround of the application that is with the Department, the report in terms of the new leak detection test was received in the past two weeks. That is a short enough window of time. I ask that the Deputy give the Department time to assess that report. I understand the urgency of a decision, especially when the leaving certificate is going on. I suppose the Deputy wants some type of affirmation that at least by the time we go back to school in September there will not be that level of leakage. I will stress the urgency of that to the Minister.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response. The line, "The Department advised the school to obtain a new leak detection test", when there are a hundred buckets on the floor, is worthy of "Yes Minister". The school put in an application for an upgrade because it does need a new roof. It was then told, "No, you cannot go under that pathway; you have to go for an emergency works pathway." The school has now done that, which is why this delay has occurred. The Minister of State has told me in detail about the climate action summer works scheme. That is a great scheme - it is fantastic - but that is not relevant here because this is not a matter of energy saving or climate action; it is a matter of the roof leaking in a hundred places.

I do not feel that this issue is being addressed by the Department with the urgency that is required. I probably should have said earlier that I sat on the board of management of this school for about four and a half years, during which time it undertook some work on the roof. It was a massive job. Work of this nature means that classrooms are not available because of the noise and disturbance caused. Summer is the ideal time to do this work. If we are waiting for the Department to make up its mind, it has not even indicated that it will make up its mind. It will go back and tell the principal the next steps.

If we eventually get a positive outcome from the Department, it is not looking like this will be decided any time soon. There is a bigger question about Coolmine and the need to do a complete rebuild. The building is more than 50 years old. It has been a great school but it is not fit for purpose for 1,000 students. This is something that I and other Deputies will raise with the Minister in the future. However, right now, I cannot stress enough the urgency of the Department coming back and getting an answer to the emergency works application by the school to allow this to proceed. I ask the Minister of State to press this with the Minister and the Department of Education and Youth.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, I will press this. There is also an opportunity for schools to apply for the climate action summer works scheme, although perhaps it does not apply to Coolmine. The emergency works scheme is obviously the right one. I take the Deputy's point about buckets. All we have to do is look at the number of buckets that are gathering water at the moment to discover that there are leaks there. The leak detection test may highlight the exact seriousness of the problem and how much work is involved. It is not good enough in this day and age. There has been record investment in education on the capital side. New schools are being built and additional classrooms provided. There is a lot of construction work going on across the board. The fact that a school that educates more than 1,000 pupils is in this condition is very hard to stand over. I will press it with the Minister. I am hopeful for the Deputy and the students and parents that we will get a positive outcome on this. I will stress the urgency of it and I will come back to the Deputy as soon as I have any feedback.