Joe Conway (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Grealish. I am here as an advocate for the school community in Scoil Gharbháin, which serves the people of Dungarvan, Abbeyside and most of west Waterford. The Minister of State and I are of a vintage to remember the beginning of the Gaelscoil movement. That is 50 years faoi lán seoil at this stage.

We could reasonably say that the Gaelscoil movement is a victim of its own success. Gaelscoileanna everywhere are held in high esteem and are expanding and getting greater pupil numbers and greater parental acceptance. One such school is Scoil Gharbháin, which is a big school by any standards and which has an enrolment of about 320 pupils. The school serves the very strategically important town of Dungarvan in the west of the county. Being a victim of its own success, it needs to expand. The Department of Education and Youth owns the lands on which the mooted extension is going to be built, so that is not a problem. The whole idea of an extension is not a problem. It is uncontested. The Department, the school community and the board of management are as one. It is not a question of whether this is going to happen. The question of increasing importance to the school community is when it is going to happen. We have gone through a lot of the so-called loops that plague school communities, boards of management and principals. We may actually be close to the appointment of a design team to progress the final design for submission to Waterford City and County Council for planning permission, which would be a tangible indication that the project is nearly over the line. The Minister of State might be able to shine a light on that.

The proposed extension comprises four mainstream classrooms, two special educational needs classrooms and three special education tuition rooms. Special education is a fundamental constitutional right for people who want to provide their children with Irish-medium education. Gaelscoileanna are often seen as kind of elitist, but they do have special needs and have children within them who have special needs.This would be a furtherance of the provision of special needs responsibility and answerability for children in Gaelscoileanna education.

That is really the nub of it. The parents, school community and board of management know that it is going to happen but the original application went in in 2018 and we have an expression in the Gaeilge that the Minister of State will be familiar with, being a Galway man, namely, meileann muilte Dé go mall or the wheels of God grind slowly. Well, if the wheels of God grind slowly, meileann muilte an Roinn Oideachais níos moille fós. They grind even slower still. After seven years of the preparation of the project, I think it is time to push through the design team’s report so that we can progress to planning application stage and make certitude of this really worthwhile project.