Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

The request for assistance in divestment has come from the Catholic Church.

I will turn to the third category, namely, the 1,700 stand-alone schools, including all of the rural schools. This category comprises a part of the country in which there will be no new additional capacity in the schools' infrastructure. While there may be upgrading and improvement in quality, there will be no additionality in respect of capacity. The area that has been identified is not the only such area because in round figures there are only 250 schools within the 47 areas under discussion. Moreover, given there are 1,700 stand-alone schools, one has a balance to make up the total of 3,200 schools and the Department is considering this particular area. When we meet within a number of weeks, we will start a discussion to ascertain how the method of divestment can take place in such a way that the Catholic Church does not consider itself to be abandoning certain sections of the community. These are its concerns. In some cases, the legacy of tradition means one can have a boys' school and a girls' school side-by-side. Some Educate Together schools already have been located harmoniously in buildings that were vacated by the Catholic Church because on foot of population change, the schools for boys and girls had been amalgamated into a single entity, thereby freeing up a building. A particular example in Rathfarnham comes to mind in this regard. Therefore, different models are available for such divestment.