Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to be associated with the comments of my colleagues concerning the late John Connor. As Senator McGahon said, he represented Longford-Roscommon for a term, alongside the late Louis Belton. It is ironic to lose these two stalwarts of the party in a short time. Our deepest sympathy goes to the Connor family.

I wish to raise the issue of the school building programme. I have been chatting to representatives of several schools in my area, including Ballymahon Vocational School and St. Columba's National School in north County Longford. Both those schools have submitted applications for additional classrooms based on their numbers. They are going to have higher numbers for the next several years. The school building unit, however, has said that no further applications for primary schools are going to be assessed for additional accommodation for mainstream classrooms.

I think we need a discussion on this matter. I do not think this is the proper situation to have. If a school needs accommodation, then it should get it to suit the pupil numbers. We cannot have a situation where we are saying that for the next several years we are not going to put funding in place for additional classrooms. We may need to consider where we are with the school building programme. I know we had issues several months ago and it all got clarified.A significant number have been announced in recent years. Where are they at? What stage of the process are the schools at? We cannot have a situation where a school is told its application will not be assessed. This is not acceptable. We might have a discussion with the Minister for Education to get an update on where the schools building programme is at present and what are the projections for the coming years with regard to accommodation in mainstream and special education.

I want to raise a matter that I also raised at an Oireachtas committee meeting a number of weeks ago when we met some of the online companies. It is with regard to the protection of people in public life. Meta said that because we are politicians we are open to criticism and it will not take down any offensive material that is put up about people in political life, even if it is untrue. This is not satisfactory. The Oireachtas committee will meet Meta tomorrow to have further discussions on this issue. It is difficult to get people into public life and it is not acceptable if a social media company feels that people can put up lies about those in public life.