Pat Casey (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for her commitment to the Seanad. It is appreciated.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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It is good to see Senator Casey in the Chair today. I thank the Minister for Education for coming in to the Seanad today and it is very much appreciated.

I wish to refer to the Galway Educate Together Secondary School and Cuan na Gaillimhe Community National School, which is a Steiner school. I have spoken to the Minister about them before and I mentioned one of them on the floor of the Seanad during the Order of Business. It took many years of activism and parents really pushing for the Galway Educate Together Secondary School to get the go-ahead in Galway. There are a number of Educate Together national schools in Galway and now we have the first Educate Together secondary school for the whole county so it covers a couple of catchment areas. At the moment the secondary school has 87 pupils between first and second year. Next year, there will be a new intake but that has been capped at 48 students purely on the basis that there is not enough space. This should be a school that can take up to 1,000 pupils but it has such a small footprint and prefabs are stacked on top of each other. I know the school staff and they are wonderful. I am very proud that we have this school in Galway. I am very proud of the work of the teachers and they have been really patient. I know that the Department has helped them in lots of other ways because of the space problem. The need is urgent now because come September 2022, the school will be unable to take anyone else. We all know and understand that there is a period between planning and things progressing to the next stage. However, a signal needs to be sent to the teachers because they have waited patiently for so long and I would hate that we could not give them some good news.

I was involved in the setting up of Cuan na Gaillimhe, in putting in the application a number of years ago, and we got the go-ahead in 2016 along with an Educate Together school. It started for two years in a building with an insurance company on the first floor. The school has now moved into prefabs located at the back of the Knocknacarra Educate Together school and Cuan na Gaillimhe has been there since 2018, waiting to hear.The Minister will know that the patronage was transferred from Lifeways Irelands to Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board, GRETB, in 2019. Regardless of this, those children are children wherever they are. They and their parents need some certainty that they will be able to move on. I understand that it may be as long as 48 months before the school will be able to move and that there is still no concrete indication as to whether space will be available on the grounds of another school, one of the sites being considered. However, the school will have an enrolment of 94 by September, comprising new students and those already there, and there is no space to expand further. The school has applied for a grant for emergency works. I understand this was turned down but that it is being appealed. It is important to realise that, even if this grant was given, the works would not be completed by September so we are talking about preparations for the following year. In addition, there is no space for students with special needs. Neither school has an autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit. I ask the Minister to expedite this matter and to see what she is able to do.

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Senator. I know these two cases are of particular interest to her. I acknowledge that she has raised these issues consistently. To give the background as to where we are within the Department, following a demographic exercise carried out by the Department into the future need for primary and post-primary schools across the county for the period from 2019 to 2022, the requirement for a new 1000-pupil post-primary school to be established in 2019 to serve the east side of Galway city and Oranmore school planning areas as a regional solution was announced by Government, as the Senator has alluded to. In October 2018, the patronage of the new post-primary school was awarded to Educate Together. The Department has identified the eastern environs of Galway city and Oranmore as the location for the school to best serve the demographic demands of these school planning areas.

The Educate Together secondary school opened in September 2019, as the Senator outlined, in interim accommodation at Grianach House, Merlin Park, Galway city, pending delivery of its permanent accommodation. Departmental officials are working closely with officials of Galway County Council and Galway City Council under the memorandum of understanding regarding the identification and acquisition of a suitable permanent location for the school. The potential requirement for the permanent site to accommodate a temporary school while construction of the permanent building is ongoing is also being taken into consideration. A number of site options have been identified and are under active consideration. These include a zoned site. Discussions with relevant stakeholders with regard to the provision of access and services to this particular site are ongoing. Due to commercial sensitivities, it is not possible to provide further information on these options at this point. However, as soon as it is possible to do so, I will make that information available.

With regard to Cuan na Gaillimhe Community National School, the requirement for a new site for the provision of an eight-classroom primary school, extendable to 16 classrooms, with a special educational needs space for the school was established in September 2015 when it opened in temporary accommodation on a site shared with Knocknacarra Educate Together National School, which is accommodated in a permanent structure. Cuan na Gaillimhe is a multi-denominational co-educational school located in the Galway school planning area. The school opened in September 2015 under the patronage of Lifeways Ireland with an enrolment of ten pupils, which has since increased to 66. In August 2019, the patronage changed to GRETB.

A project for a new school building for Cuan na Gaillimhe is on the Department's six-year capital programme. In line with the policy on the use of State assets, the Department is seeking to maximise the use of sites in the Minister's ownership and other available properties in the ownership of State bodies. The Department also consults with local authorities, in line with the memorandum of understanding for the acquisition of school sites, to assist the Department to identify suitable sites and to seek the views of the local authority with regard to any potential site options. As the school is a community national school, of which the ETB is the patron, the site acquisition has been devolved to the ETB, which is currently working closely with the council. Discussions between the ETB and the council in respect of the acquisition of the preferred site are at an extremely advanced stage. That is the up-to-date situation from the Department's perspective.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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I appreciate that update and I thank the Minister for putting this high on her list of priorities. We recognise that that multidenominational aspect is in the programme for Government, which contains a commitment around having 400 multidenominational schools. We need to make sure they also have the school buildings and that we are not just allocating patronage. I know the Minister understands this and she has made that commitment.

One of the issues is that, given many new schools are multidenominational, it means many of the children in those schools are faced with temporary accommodation, so we need to do what we can to expedite this. Planning is obviously an ongoing issue in many areas across local government, and schools are no different.

As it is on the east of the city and it has such a wide remit, school transport is also an issue. Given the small number it can now take in and the fact there have to be ten pupils from an area, it becomes very difficult and it means no school buses are coming from the east of the city, and none from Oranmore or beyond. That also needs to be addressed if it is to truly cater for the demographics. Ethos is not really fully taken into account either and, again, this means it becomes more and more difficult.

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Senator. I again acknowledge her personal engagement on an ongoing basis in regard to these two schools. I commit that we will expedite them as quickly as we possibly can. As the Senator will appreciate, there is a considerable body of work when a number of different sites have to be technically assessed, but we will do all we can to expedite this as quickly as possible.

In regard to the emergency works at Cuan na Gaillimhe, again, we will take a look at that and see what the situation is. With regard to school transport, the Senator makes the point on the requirement to have ten pupils. Given the current situation, we will also take a look at that.

I am very conscious of the role of staff in the school community and the imposition that is placed on them when they are in temporary accommodation. I do not for one minute underestimate the difficulty, particularly given that the challenges are all the more heightened and enhanced in the current climate. I acknowledge the very high standard of work and the generosity that comes from school communities that are in situations such as has been highlighted by the Senator for these two schools. I give the Senator the assurance that we will expedite and move forward as quickly as we possibly can.