Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. The Ursuline College in Sligo was founded in 1850 and is celebrating its 175th anniversary, on which I congratulate the staff and all the students. I worked in the college for 17 years as a youth liaison worker and my daughter is a student there so I have a big interest in the college.

If one looks at a photograph of the school from its early days one can see a very recognisable and beautiful structure. Much construction has taken place through the years. The school has worked really hard and upgraded its facilities from the 1860s onwards, and the original school building still remains in use. I give credit to the Ursuline nuns at the time for adapting to the needs of students throughout the years by adding science labs, study labs and concert halls. The Ursuline nuns made the most of what they had because they valued education. In fact, throughout our difficult history, it was one of the schools that kept progressing which is evident by the growth in student numbers. Again, music rooms, home economic rooms and technology rooms have been added. I commend all these developments, which are really welcome and hard fought for, but they concealed the obvious fact that a new school building was needed. In 2014, a comment was made, not by the school principal or the board of management, but by Tony Sheppard, who was the technical manager in the planning and building unit of the Department of education, that recommended the building of a new school to encompass the protected structures of the original school and the other buildings. An application was submitted which reached stage 2 and a detailed design was submitted in May 2024. I note an answer that the then Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, gave to the Dáil in response to other representatives who raised this issue in September 2024, which said that this stage should have taken approximately 12 months. The initial part of stage 3, pre-qualification of the contract, was completed in February of this year and a list of contractors has been drawn up. An updated cost plan for the project was submitted by the design team in May 2025 following consultations and various representations from the building unit. So now the school currently awaits permission from the Department of education to issue tenders to the pre-qualified list. Again, the then Minister, Deputy Foley, stated that Stage 3 should take approximately 12 months.

The urgency is felt by the entire school because the school is not fit for purpose. The completion of this project is a matter of urgency because the current planning permission is due to expire in May 2027. If construction has not reached an appropriate stage within the next 16 months, which in the grand scheme of things is not that far away, the development will have to go back to planning, thus creating additional delays and increasing costs. Significant costs have already been incurred throughout the planning process.

I ask the Minister of State to confirm the current status of this project, to state when the school community can expect stage 3 to be completed and to set out when can they expect it to move to stage 4, which is the construction phase.