Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Cathaoirleach for choosing my topic for discussion on the Adjournment. This is an ongoing issue. There is a small school in Monreagh, Carrigans, County Donegal, which was one of our first integrated schools, although the predominant ethos is Church of Ireland. The school was built in 1853 and there are 17 students, with 23 planned to enrol in September. There has been quite a lot of development in the general locality of the school and we are trying to encourage the community of those who have moved from Derry to this lovely rural area of Donegal to take up the opportunity of using the school.

It was decided in 2001 that a new school was needed. It is difficult to encourage not only the existing population but also new arrivals to use a school that has structural and physical problems such as this school has. The front of the school faces onto a very narrow road which is used by lorries carrying material from a quarry. These lorries deposit large stones in the area, as we discovered on Monday night when we attended a meeting at the school and saw for ourselves the stones that are bouncing off the lorries. The back of the school is shared with a working farmyard. Due to natural run-off of fertiliser and other such issues, it is not a particularly healthy environment for the school.

The biggest difficulty is that we are trying to sell the message that the school is to be relocated. Three sites so far have failed for one reason or another to materialise. There is a fourth site and the difficulty is not with the Department of Education and Science so much as with the Office of Public Works. The specific question we need answered is why there seems to be a problem with the complete title on the land. The owner bought the land 27 years ago and, he understands, has full title. Despite this, when he tried selling it on to the OPW, it stated there was an issue with the title of which nobody else seemed to be aware. At this time we are totally in the hands of anyone who can give us information on how we can make progress on this site. As I said, this is the fourth site that has been suggested for the school. It is now seven years since a new school was sanctioned. The current site is unsuitable and dangerous with health and safety issues both outside and inside the school. The school should be moving quickly through the system on the basis of the case presented in 2001 and also the very good presentation made by Angela McGee on Monday night, a copy of which I can give to anybody in the Department to prove the case.

The fundamental point is that we cannot move on to questions of whether we should be in band 1 or band 2 or how quickly we should be moving through the system because we do not yet have a site. I ask the Minister of State to elicit the information, if he has not already obtained it, on why there is a problem, whether it may be overcome and how we may do so. If someone else buys the site and then sells it to the OPW, will it accept that title? I know this is becoming personal because no matter how one deals with it, someone owns the site which the OPW is talking about buying, but I cannot overcome this issue. It is the sticking point.

We talk about maintaining communities in rural Ireland. This is a very strong rural area. The decision was taken in 1996 that the school would not be amalgamated with another school, but the Minister of State can understand the difficulty, as the years go by, of selling the message that a new school will be built. There are many new houses in the area whose families will sustain the school. Sustaining a school means sustaining a rural community. The people in this area do not have a religious bias. They are so close to the Border that in some places it would defy one to find the other side.