Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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222. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills why there is no Gaelscoil for Ballyfermot, Dublin 10; and if the catchment area for Lucan, Clondalkin or Inchicore will be expanded to include Ballyfermot. [16033/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Since 2011 new schools are generally only established in areas of demographic growth. For planning purposes, my Department uses school planning areas, of which there are 314 nationwide, including some 40 in Dublin. Ballyfermot, Dublin 10, has its own school planning area, as does Lucan and Clondalkin. Inchicore is included in the Dublin 8 school planning area.

My Department uses a Geographical Information System to identify the school planning areas under increased demographic pressure nationwide. The system uses data from the Central Statistics Office, Ordnance Survey Ireland, the Department of Social Protection and information from my own Department's databases. With this information, nationwide demographic exercises are carried out to determine where additional school accommodation is needed at primary and post-primary levels.

When it is decided that a new school is required to meet demographic needs in an area, the Department runs a separate patronage process to decide who will operate the new school. It is open to all patrons and prospective patrons, including Irish-medium education providers, to apply for patronage of the school under this process and the level of parental preference for each patron is key to decisions in relation to the outcome of the process.

The outcome of the latest demographic exercises was that in November 2015, the establishment of 13 new schools to open nationwide in 2017 and 2018 to meet demographic needs was announced. All school planning areas, including the Ballyfermot area are being kept under ongoing review by my Department to take account of updated child benefit data and enrolment data and also the impact of existing and planned capacity increases to schools in this, and adjacent, areas.