Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being here today which is much appreciated.

My Commencement matter relates to Kilsheelan National School, which is a wonderful community school in a small village just outside Clonmel. People will be very familiar with Kilsheelan which is a previous winner of the Tidy Towns and comes very close to winning most years. It is a wonderful village right on the Suir Blueway between Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir. The school has more than 100 pupils with five teachers including a teaching principal, two special educational teachers, one shared teacher, one special needs assistant, SNA, one secretary and a cleaner and caretaker. The principal, Kevin Prendergast, has been doing incredible work in recent years in trying to modernise the school to the standards that we now expect from a top-class primary school. He has been fully supported by the wonderful board of management led by Seán Connolly.

This school was built in 1960 and had some additional building works in the 1980s. Essentially, since the 1980s there have been no improvements of any major scale. For the past 20 years two of its classrooms have been prefab classrooms. In 2020 it submitted an application to turn those two prefab classrooms into two mainstream classrooms with an additional special educational classroom. There have obviously been hold-ups owing to the Covid pandemic and, as with every project in the country, there has been a massive increase in costs. I am really happy that the Commencement matter has been taken today.

The school has been going through a tender process which was due to finish about two weeks ago but was actually extended until today, 20 June. The school will submit a tendering report to the Department of Education. While it cannot be done today, once that tendering process is put through by the principal in the board of management of Kilsheelan National School, my request is that the Department make a decision on that as quickly as possible. The conditions in the prefabs which have been there for 20 years are extremely poor. The prefabs have metal roofs and are poorly insulated. During the winter months children often complain of being cold. Teachers often have to do walks just to keep people warm. The cost of heating the place is fairly significant and much higher than most schools.All the principal and the board of management want to do for the community in Kilsheelan and the hinterland is to create and modernise a school to the standard we expect from all new schools that are built by the Minister of State's Department. It was only a couple of weeks ago the Taoiseach came to open a massive new school in Cahir. The classrooms in that school are incredible. All we want to do, and I know it is all the Minister of State and the Government want to do, is to give that to every child in the country. The principal, Mr. Kevin Prendergast, and his board of management want to do that. It has been approved by the Minister and the Department, which is important. They also want to ensure there are no hold-ups along the way.