Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I raise the issue of an application for additional school accommodation by St. Mel's College, Longford, a school I attended a number of years ago. The college opened in September 1865, with 48 boarders and 28 day boys. For most of the next decade, the college was a major seminary, where students pursued philosophy and theology through to ordination. More than 650 former students of the college were ordained to the priesthood between 1865 and 2000. In 1965, the centenary of the college's foundation was marked with the building of a new wing to provide accommodation for 100 boarders, as well as a new refectory. Prefabricated buildings were also built to cope with the increase in numbers.

In 1996, there were 740 students and 42 teachers, while in 2002, the last boarding students departed, ending a tradition that began in 1865. In 2010, St. Mel's College welcomed the parishioners of Longford following the fire on Christmas Day 2009 in St. Mel's Cathedral, and for five years the school hosted mass for the parishioners in Longford. St. Mel's also has a great history of sporting achievement, and by the year 1994 had won a total of 28 Leinster GAA titles. The school is on a fantastic site and is lucky to have football fields, which are used by the school and are open to other groups, such as underage county hurling, and recently signed an agreement with Longford Athletics Club to provide an indoors athletics facility for the county.

The school has applied to the Department for additional school accommodation. Grant aid is sought to remove nine prefabricated classrooms and to replace them with nine classrooms in the existing building, the 1865 wing, which has a number of classrooms. If funding is received, these classrooms will include a large technical graphics room, a guidance suite, a computer room and a music room. St. Mel's wants to move these classes into the 1865 building, as this would bring the school back to its original home and save having to build a new building to replace the prefabricated buildings, which are now in a state of decline. A recent architects' report on the prefabricated buildings commented that the college continues to maintain the demountable buildings and keep them decorated but that they are in poor condition. It went on to say there were poor insulation values, that the buildings were not up to current fire safety standards, and that the rooms are appropriate for temporary, not permanent, accommodation use.

The college was built as an educational environment for boys after the Famine and the vision at the time was to provide education for boys in the surrounding areas. This vision has not changed and the school would like to bring the 1865 building back to use by using it to house a total of 15 classrooms, where the boys will once again walk the corridors and receive their second level education. This building provides excellent additional space on the first and second floors to provide these additional classrooms, which the school feels will satisfy the growing numbers in the school over the coming years and into the future. At present, there are a total of 560 pupils, with a projected enrolment in 2021 of 580. A large number of pupils from Longford town have to travel in excess of ten miles outside the town area to receive secondary education due to the low number of places available in the town. Longford County Council is replacing with railings a 7 ft high wall on St. Mel's Road to open up the views of this historic building. I hope the Department can follow suit by providing funding to bring this old building back to life and to have students walk its corridors again.