Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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134. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if the catchment area map that applied to the competition to award the patronage to a new school in the Carpenterstown and Castleknock area, which was won by an organisation (details supplied), will be the permanent catchment area for that particular school once it is established; if the school’s board of management will be able to amend the catchment area in the future; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40207/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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For school planning purposes, my Department divides the country into 314 geographic areas known as school planning areas which facilitates the orderly planning of school provision and accommodation needs. In identifying the requirement for additional school places, my Department uses a Geographical Information System to identify the areas under increased demographic pressure nationwide.

As the Deputy may be aware, on foot of the last nationwide demographic exercises, the establishment of four new primary schools and nine new post-primary schools to open in 2017 and 2018 was announced. A number of these schools were announced as regional solutions to serve a number of school planning areas under increased demographic pressure, including the new post-primary school announced to serve the Carpenterstown and Castleknock school planning areas in Dublin 15, which opened in September 2017 in interim accommodation at the Le Chéile Secondary School in Tyrellstown.

When it is decided that a new school is required to meet demographic needs in a school planning area(s), a patronage process is conducted to decide who will operate the school. Parental preferences for each patron from parents of children who reside in the school planning area(s) are key to decisions in relation to the outcome of this process.

All new schools established since 2011 to meet demographic demand are required to prioritise pupil applications from within the designated school planning area(s) which the school was established to serve. This does not preclude schools from enrolling pupils from outside of the designated school planning area(s), rather it reflects the need to accommodate in the first instance the demographic for which the school was established. The Department’s focus is to ensure that schools in an area can, between them, cater for all pupils seeking school places within that school planning area(s).