Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I appreciate the Minister of State's attendance. This is an important issue. Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire is a primary school that has been located in temporary facilities - the Minister of State may struggle to believe this - for 23 years. To give a perspective on the human impact of that amount of time, the principal, Paul Hansard, a very fine principal and school teacher, attended the school himself. He went to secondary school, college, became a teacher and has been the principal for a number of years. That gives a perspective of how long the school has been in temporary accommodation. The cost is hundreds of thousands of euro every year. I will not get into the monetary cost of what has been spent by the State in providing inadequate education facilities for the finest young children and teachers in the country. I am biased because I am based in Dublin Central, but they are the finest. The páistí and múinteoirí are fantastic people.

It was my great privilege as a city councillor over a decade ago, with other councillors, to transfer land so that school could have a permanent, purpose-built building on Dominick Street. I made it number one on the agenda when Fianna Fáil went into government in 2020 that Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire have a purpose-built school. I give credit to Deputy Foley, because it was to our great satisfaction that, during the previous Government term, the purpose-built school commenced. The design was already prepared, with world-class architects and construction companies involved in designing and building the school. I have been down to the site; it is a challenging site. Any place in the inner city, particularly a brownfield site, will always be challenging. We are a medieval city, too, so there are always issues around foundations and archaeology. There are Luas lines and power lines going by. We live in the real world, us Dubs. We are very practical; we understand. We have all chosen to live in the city, bring up our kids in the city and have them educated in the heart of our great capital.

I cannot tell the Minister of State how depressing it is to say that, if he and I were to go down to Dominick Street today, no work would be going on. Building work has ceased. Those páistí and múinteoirí were promised a new 16-classroom, state-of-the-art, designed and built school that would be ready for them to move into this year. It was not entirely a surprise when we got word it was delayed because we had heard about it towards the end of last year. We were given assurances by the Department that everything that could be done was being done, a project management team was in place and everything to recover the lost time and accelerate the project would be done.

As I said, though, work has stopped and there is no prospect of a date by which the school can move into its new building. That is why I submitted this Commencement matter, to ask the Minister for Education and Youth to come to the House to update not just me but, more importantly, the school community. Teachers, pupils and parents want to know the plan to get builders back on site, recommence and accelerate construction and put a date in place by which they will move into their new school building. What will happen in the interim? At this point, the best guess is some time in 2026. I hope the Minister of State has an update.