Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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Question 158: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the criteria used in determining school catchment areas; and the factors used in deciding on priorities for the construction of new school buildings. [5459/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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In the interest of rational arrangements for the purposes of educational provision, the country is divided into catchment areas, each of which has its own post-primary education centre. These areas were drawn up in the late 1960s in the context of the free education scheme. The catchment boundaries were determined following consultation with local educational interests and the intention was that certain primary schools would feed exclusively into each post primary centre. A relatively small number of primary schools are shared between two or more centres. My Department provides resources to meet the educational needs of an area on this basis.

The prioritisation system used by my Department for large scale building works classifies projects by reference to a range of well established and well-defined categories. Within these categories, projects are assigned to an appropriate band of priority. There are four such bands, with band one being the highest priority and band four being the lowest. The criteria used to decide the band ratings were revised and published early last year following consultation with the education partners. When shaping a programme those projects that command the highest priority banding within their respective categories are considered for inclusion.