John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, I thank Senator Colm Burke for raising this important matter. It provides me with the opportunity to outline to the Seanad the current position in relation to the major building project for Scoil an Athar Tadhg national school. The project is included in the six-year construction programme for 2016 to 2021 which was announced in November 2015. The brief for the project is to provide a new two-storey, 16-classroom school with a five-classroom autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, unit. The board of management of the school is the client for the project and is fully responsible for directing the design team on progress through the design stages of architectural planning. The board has made a number of changes to the brief over the past ten years and this has resulted in significant delays in advancing the project and bringing it to site.

In October 2009, a proposed exchange of the greenfield site for the current school site which had been advanced by the board of management was deemed to be no longer a viable proposition. The reappointment of the design team was then required following a changed brief to accommodate the new school on the existing school site. A replacement civil and structural engineer and replacement quantity surveyor also had to be appointed in June 2011 following the withdrawal of the original consultants from the design team. In March 2016, the board of management requested a further brief change, which included an increase in floor area, at an additional cost of over €2 million. This brief change was approved by my Department in August 2016.

Based on the 2016 brief, the project reached the end of stage 2b in early 2017 and would then have been ready for progression to tender stage. However, in June 2017, the board of management wrote to the Department requesting a meeting to discuss the possibility of a new greenfield site which the board of management was proposing as an alternative site for this building project. Following a meeting between the school's representatives and the Department in January 2018, the Department agreed to facilitate the school and its design team to submit a report on the viability of moving to the new alternative site. The report submitted to my Department in June 2018 included details of a pre-planning meeting with Cork County Council which took place on 30 May 2018. Following a review of the report, the Department authorised the school and its design team to submit a revised stage 2a, developed sketch scheme, submission based on the proposals for the new site. The stage 2a submission has recently been received in my Department and a stage 2a stakeholders' meeting is taking place today. At the meeting, the design team will make a presentation of the proposals to the Department. As soon as the stage 2a submission can be approved, my Department will be in a position to authorise the board of management to proceed with the new planning application which is now required due to the board's proposal to move the project to an alternative site. I hope that clarifies matters for the Senator. I believe the meeting is taking place as we speak. Hopefully, we will be able to move forward over the next couple of weeks to bring the project to a conclusion.