Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I wish to talk again about St. Joseph's secondary school in Rush. The Minister will recall that I had a Commencement matter on 6 November last on the urgent need to provide temporary accommodation and he announced that day that the application had been approved. We spoke then about the need for a permanent new school building for St. Joseph's in Rush. I wish to remind the Minister that St Joseph's is a school with 1,000 pupils and it is the only secondary school in the town of Rush. Rush and all the towns in north county Dublin are expanding rapidly. It is the fastest growing part of the country with the youngest population. Obviously, there is a very strong demand there for primary and post-primary school places.

The capacity issue needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. The Minister approved four prefabricated buildings at that time because there was a crisis. There are 102 students on the waiting list for places in September 2019 who could not be offered places. Thankfully, that issue has been resolved. I mentioned at the time that there was no extra capacity to expand in the school.Enrolments in the primary schools in the town of Rush had indicated a similar demand for places next year and into the future. At that time, the Minister said he was actively pursuing a site for the school. St. Joseph's has an excellent reputation in Rush and beyond. Its principal, Ms Patricia Hayden, and the teaching staff in the school do an excellent job. It is a DEIS school and it is linked into the Trinity access programme. There is 100% progression to third level and apprenticeships from the school, which the Minister will agree is exceptional. This year, the school had six entries in the BT Young Scientist exhibition. As there was only one other school in the country with a higher number of entries, that is an exceptional record, particularly when one considers that the school does not have sufficient science laboratories. All credit must go to the principal, the teaching staff and all the other staff in the school and, of course, the commitment of the parents to the school.

The young people of Rush want to be educated in this school. They demand to be educated in it, but capacity makes that very difficult. It is worth noting that secondary schools in the neighbouring towns of Lusk and Skerries are also experiencing capacity issues and as such they will not be able to accept any overflow of students from Rush. On 6 November last the Minister said that a site was being acquired. However, when my colleague, Councillor Brian Dennehy, a Fingal county councillor who lives in Rush and whose children attend St. Joseph's, tabled a motion on the matter to Fingal County Council on 8 November, he was told by a senior official of the council that there was no instruction from the Department of Education and Skills to acquire a site. As I understand it, this remains the position. We were all dismayed with the response received to Councillor Dennehy's motion because we had been led to believe that this announcement was imminent. There has been land zoned in the town for the school for ten years. Following on from the work of Councillor Brian Dennehy in Rush, upgrading works on the Park Road are due to commence imminently, which will allow for access to that site. When will the Minister issue a request to Fingal County Council to acquire this site and when will construction on the new school commence?