Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth. This Commencement matter is for the attention of the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, and it relates to providing an update on school capacity reviews in County Galway, including Ballinasloe. It is crucial that we provide an update on school capacity across the country because this is the data the Department of Education uses to identify whether school places are needed for children or whether we need new schools or new classrooms. That is the system that is used, and the Minister of State would be very familiar, I think, with geographical information systems in any case, given his background. It is crucial that we see these capacity reviews completed at an early stage. They are done only once a year. I would have queries as to why this cannot be a live document and a live update, with schools coming back with data on an ongoing basis. Surely that could be managed. Currently, it is a point in time, once a year, when schools are requested to complete a survey from the Department of Education. They indicate their capacity. That is then uploaded onto this geographical information system, ArcGIS, which is the system that is used.

My question is on the current status of the updates to that system is for County Galway, in particular in Ballinasloe. This is used along with school planning areas, which the Minister of State spoke about, across the country. We have 315 or 316 areas, from what I understand, and the schools then look at capacity in these areas. There are, however, lots of crisis areas in the country at the moment when it comes to primary school places, and we need to see how this data can be used at an early stage, now, in order that we can then plan for the budget, whether it is school transport, additional classes or a new school. Is it needed now for September? We should work with the teams in the Department of Education to do that because the only options we have are to try to look at existing capacity within a school, deliver new classrooms or look at a new school. Those are the three options we have in front of us.

This system is also used by the regional education and language teams, REALTs, in the education and training boards, ETBs, to identify school places for children of families coming from abroad, from many countries, including Ukraine, who come to Ireland, who need refuge and who set up here. They cannot find space, and it is a challenge to get space in schools. I am speaking specifically about the Ballinasloe area. The Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion, Deputy Madigan, only recently visited Ballinasloe. I have worked hard on projects over the past year where we had two classrooms open up in Creagh National School, a school of nearly 440 students. That is at capacity. The children were outside of the school trying to use every available space before they could move into these school classrooms. The same goes for St. Teresa's Special School. It was really good to see the new special classes opening up in Ardscoil Mhuire and Corbally college as well.

There are huge issues, however. We have over 1,000 children at primary school level and another 1,000 students at post-primary level. These children are struggling in terms of young families moving to the town and finding a place for their children. We have allocation of over 100 new housing units in Ballinasloe, which is wonderful. We will have families moving into new homes, local authority housing in Ballinasloe. Those families will have a lot of demands. By the nature of this, they will have more demands in probably having younger families. They will also have more demands when it comes to GP visit cards because, as regards the median income now, people are being allocated these GP cards.

When we look at Ballinasloe and the Pobal deprivation index and the level of deprivation, we see that there are areas in Ballinasloe that are -55 on the index. What is the plan of the Department of Education for children to go to schools? We have a DEIS level 1 school in Ballinasloe that caters for the whole county of Galway and the surrounding counties: Westmeath, Roscommon, Offaly and north Tipperary. When families do not have the transport to get children from the town 5 km out to a smaller school outside it, will we have school transport in place? Will a new school be put in place? I have spoken to three principals of those schools, including a Gaelscoil, which can cater to so many children, but, again, there are challenges when it comes to English as an additional language, EAL, supports. Also, will we have challenges when we have no space to put in additional classrooms?

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I am taking this question on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, who is out of the country. I thank the Senator for raising the matter as it provides me with an opportunity to outline the position on school capacity reviews in County Galway, including Ballinasloe, and the use of the ArcGIS system to assist the REALTs in their work of sourcing school places.

As the Senator will be aware, regional educational and language teams, REALTs, were established as part of the Department of Education's response to the humanitarian crisis arising from the war in Ukraine. Part of the REALTs' role was to assist in finding school places for Ukrainian children. This was subsequently extended to providing for international protection applicants seeking school placement. Over 17,500 Ukrainian students have been enrolled in our schools to date.This is a testament to the fantastic work done across school communities and by REALT. Critical to this success has been the use of existing school capacity and the Department of Education has worked closely with the REALT to support and co-ordinate a strategic approach in this respect. As part of this strategic response, data available to the Department on school capacity was provided to the REALT. The Department further supplemented the data with additional information collected from schools via online surveys. Ultimately, the capacity of a school is a matter for that school's board of management and patron, taking into account specific circumstances. At post-primary level, capacity is particularly complex as class groupings, subject options, and timetabling are all relevant. However, there are certain indicators of capacity which are useful in identifying a school's likely ability to facilitate additional enrolments and such indicators include data on current and historic enrolments; reported available classrooms; information regarding current or recent school building projects; and schools' self-reported capacity to enroll additional students in certain class or year groups. The most recent information currently available relates to the 2022-2023 school year and the Department of Education will be refreshing this over the coming months, including as the recent 2022-2024 enrolment returns are finalised.

The Senator will appreciate that, while specific capacity at schools is fluid and can have certain complexities and nuances, in combination, the available indicators of capacity give a good sense of school-place pressures in an area. From the information provided by schools and the Department earlier in the year, there appear to be available school places and classrooms at primary level generally across County Galway, including at schools in Ballinasloe town and across the Ballinasloe school planning area. Capacity at post-primary level is more constrained as it is generally across the country in the context of peaking post-primary demographics. A strategic and co-ordinated approach to managing enrolments and maximising existing capacity, both at individual school level and across a town or area, is important to ensure school accommodation capacity is used in the most effective way. The Department continues to monitor school place requirements across the country, including in Ballinasloe and in the wider county. It undertakes demographic exercises and analyses residential development activity in order to anticipate school place requirements in the future. It also engages closely with school authorities and patrons to identify and resolve any school place pressures. This collaboration with patrons will be informed by data on schools' applications for admission.

As the Senator may be aware, the admission process for many primary schools will be starting in the first quarter of next year, which means that engagement will be ongoing over the coming months. The Department is currently progressing a number of building projects in Ballinasloe under the national development plan. The most significant project for planned additional capacity is a new 16-classroom school building for Scoil an Chroí Naofa, which will also provide three classrooms for pupils with special educational needs. This project is currently at stage 2B and has recently received a grant of planning permission. The Department is also engaging with the patrons of Ardscoil Mhuire and St. Joseph's College in Ballinasloe regarding their proposed amalgamation and with a view to considering their overall accommodation needs. However, I would underline that ensuring sufficient school capacity is, and will continue to be, a priority for the Department. The school place needs in Ballinasloe and across County Galway, as with all other areas, will continue to be kept under review for the 2024, 2025, and subsequent school years.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response but it does not answer the question around when the school capacity review will be completed. The school returns are one aspect of the information that is gathered by the Department of Education. A school capacity review is a separate review and that is the information, along with other data sources, that we use when we are trying to identify school places and school capacity. It is frustrating. We are going to have more than 100 new families moving into Ballinasloe. This will open up rental capacity, which will be wonderful and new families will move to our town, which is great. I want to see our town grow; I want to see it double. However, it is not good enough to say we have data from 2022 and 2023 when I am trying to look at what budget we are going to put in place for the year ahead. I have already had such difficulty around getting school transport for children going to a school a few miles outside of Ballinasloe. We need to plan ahead now. Regarding that new school and classrooms, that new school for Scoil an Chroí Naofa for which I battled, was 27 years of waiting. I do not know how many children, parents, and grandparents have gone through that school but they are still waiting for a school and it will be another three years before that school comes on line. Where does the Minister think those children and families, including those proposed for Ballinasloe who are coming from Ukraine, are going to go? I do not know.

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I welcome the young people who are in the Gallery and hope they are able to follow what is going on. The Senator is asking me about making sure the Government is providing enough school places for students in Ballinasloe; whether there will be enough places for the students who are coming; and why we cannot build schools faster. I think that is roughly the Senator's question. The Minister, Deputy Foley, cannot be in the Chamber because she is travelling abroad and so I am answering on her behalf. The Senator's specific question, which she feels I did not answer, was when would the school capacity review be completed. I will ask the Department of Education to give me an answer on that. I met with the Minister in the last few days. I will meet with her again and ask her to give the Senator a specific answer on that. The Senator must be heartened by the fact that this school, Scoil an Chroí Naofa, for which the Senator has been looking for so many years, now has planning permission. That is a significant milestone. Many schools around the country have not reached that stage of 2B. The Department of Education has 300 school projects under construction at the moment. This is one area of the capital project that is going well. The Department is spending the money that is being allocated to the projects and is building schools at a rate of knots. I have strong confidence in the Department of Education as to what it is doing. The Department is reporting - and the Senator may feel differently - that there is apparent capacity in primary schools across the Ballinasloe school planning area, however that the primary schools within the town have more limited capacity. Existing capacity at post-primary level is certainly under much more stress than it is at primary level.