Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Exactly. Often there is a funeral, wedding or mass at the church when children arrive at school in the morning. Recently I was at the school when children were being dropped off and there was an obvious hazard. The school is doing everything that it can and its caretaker looks after the arrivals of cars, buses and so forth. Safety is a critical issue.

With regard to school accommodation, I never agreed with prefabricated accommodation even when my party, Fianna Fáil, was in government and there was lots of money being spent. The money should have gone into bricks and mortar. Children should have proper classroom accommodation. That is not too much to ask. The health and safety concerns, the prefabricated accommodation, coupled with close to 500 children playing on concrete at the back of the school at lunchtime and break times, a lack of running water, toilet and sanitary facilities and so on is totally unacceptable. A new school on a new site would be an easy solution. A new site has been identified beside the current Finn Valley sports centre which is a nationally renowned centre with a new swimming pool project under construction. The centre also has a running track of European standard. The proposed site across the road has planning permission and is being purchased by the Department. All that is required is that the school project progresses to the capital programme.

Before my party left government the project had been placed on the capital programme. I know that there are competing demands but there is no school in a similar position and St. Mary's deserves to be included. Its omission means that I no longer know what school project deserves inclusion because this is an emergency case. The project has been progressed so far. I have been in written correspondence with officials in the Department. To be fair to them, they responded and outlined the situation. In the final paragraph of recent correspondence they outlined that the project could be included in the capital programme where funds are made available. I call on the Minister this evening, but he may not have the answer but I plead with him, to consider including the project given its unique circumstances. There are almost 500 children attending St. Mary's national school and they deserve to attend a school that is safe, fit for purpose, has running water and toilet facilities and where they are not in danger of being knocked down going to or leaving school. That is what I seek. This is a simple situation. The project has been developed so all that is required is for funding to be provided over a period to build the project. We live in an era where there is great value for money. We can get value when building such a project because contractors are willing to offer a competitive price. I hope that the Minister will give me good news this evening. He is smiling and I shall take that as a good sign.