John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Nash for raising the matter. It provides me with an opportunity to go through a few points with him. I know Senator Nash and if he says the school is in that state, I believe him.

The brief for the major building project for Whitecross national school is to provide a refurbishment and an extension on the existing site to cater for a 16 classroom school. The staffing allocation for Whitecross national school is currently a principal with 16 mainstream teachers. Enrolments in September 2011 stood at 410 pupils. The enrolments in September 2015 stood at 432 which shows an incremental growth of 5%.

The design team was appointed in March 2011 with a brief to provide the extension and refurbishment work on a phased basis with a partial decant of classrooms on the existing site. The project was included in the five-year construction programme 2012-16 and was scheduled therein to commence construction in 2014.

Planning permission was granted in January 2014. Since then the board of management and its design team have presented a number of proposals to the Department to change the brief to one which involves a single decant and a single phase delivery during construction. This has led to significant delays in the progression of the project. The most recent decant option, which included the provision of significant levels of new temporary accommodation on site, involved an additional cost for the project in the region of €2 million - an increase in the overall cost of the project of around 40%.

The project has reached an advanced stage of architectural planning, stage 2b, which involves securing all statutory approvals and the preparation of tender documents. All statutory approvals have been secured. However, the difficulty is that the additional €2 million cost for the project arising from the board of management's single phase decant and construction proposal raised serious questions as to the viability of the project.

The board of management and the design team were invited to a meeting with the Department in order to resolve all outstanding issues and enable stage 2b to be completed. That meeting was held on 11 November 2016 and agreement was reached in regard to the scaling back of the temporary accommodation costs, which should now allow the project to progress to the completion of the design stages. I understand that the design team is working to complete the stage 2b report for submission to the Department in the coming months. When the submission has been reviewed, the Department will revert to the school regarding the further progression of the project at the time.

If there are further difficulties, there would be no problem with the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Richard Bruton, meeting Senator Nash to discuss the project.Progress has been made, if not to the complete satisfaction of the Senator. A very good meeting took place with the project team from the school and there is agreement to move forward. Something significant will happen. I have been told to say that if the Senator requires a further meeting with the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton, and me, we would be delighted to meet him.