David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

The Minister's response says that the project is currently at an early stage of architectural planning and acknowledges the need for a new building on a 2.5 acre site owned by the Department. However, it reads as if this is an impediment. The school is more advanced than most schools in the capital programme. This school is at the architectural design stage and the design team has been appointed. Schools that do not even exist, with no boards of management, are being provided with funding yet this school, which has been fighting for 26 years and whose pupils have been taught in prefabs since the early 2000, is not included in the capital programme. It is simply not good enough and the Minister of State should pass on a message to the Minister for Education and Skills that we cannot have schools that exist only on paper being provided with funding while a school that has jumped through all the hoops and over all the hurdles is badly let down. The decision needs to be reversed and I impress upon the Minister of State the need to bring this back to the Minister for Education and Skills as a matter of urgency.