Mary Wallace (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for raising this matter as it provides me with the opportunity to outline to the House the position on the proposed building project for Marymount national school, The Rower, County Kilkenny. Marymount national school is a fully vertical, co-educational facility. This means it caters for boys and girls from junior infants to sixth class inclusive. The enrolment as at 30 September 2007 was 128 pupils. The school has a principal, four mainstream assistants and one learning support teacher. The school has applied to the Department for large scale capital funding for an extension and refurbishment project. In common with all applications for large scale capital funding, the application for Marymount was assessed in accordance with the Department's published prioritisation criteria for large scale building projects. It has been assigned a band 2.4 rating under this process.

A band rating reflects the type and extent of work needed and the urgency attaching to it. In this case, the band 2.4 rating reflects the fact that a refurbishment of the school building is needed and that the school has a deficit of mainstream accommodation but this deficit is not as significant as that of higher band rated projects. Overall, the Department intends to provide the school with suitable accommodation for a five teacher school. The project was on the Department's capital programme for 2007 to advance to tender and construction. Tenders were submitted late last year.

As the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe has said in this House many times before, not all school accommodation needs can be met together. They can be met only incrementally over time in a structured orderly manner. A realism has to attach to the fact that there was a significant under-investment in school buildings over decades. Taken together with the current extra demands on the Department's capital budget from newly emerging communities with little or no school infrastructure and the growing need to provide for special needs pupils, to name but a few, it is clear the Department must stand on an orderly process in terms of how it allocates its capital funding to ensure the most critical needs are met first.

The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, appreciates that boards of management and wider school communities are anxious to see their individual building projects proceeding as quickly as possible. The Minister has no desire to see schools in less than suitable accommodation but he, too, must be realistic about what needs to be done on a nationwide basis and to ensure that the resources of the Department are targeted at the most urgent needs first. This is ensured by the implementation of the prioritisation criteria which the Minister has outlined.

This Government has dramatically increased investment in the schools building programme to almost €600 million this year. This will allow it to continue to significantly invest in primary and post-primary school buildings throughout the country, to provide additional school places and to continue the Department's programme of modernising existing schools. Annual capital resources of this magnitude have allowed the Department to deliver more than 7,800 building projects under the last national development plan alone. The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, looks forward to building on this unprecedented level of work.

I again thank the Senator for raising this matter and assure him that the project for Marymount national school will be considered for advancement in accordance with the procedures I have outlined.