Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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186. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of 12 to 18 year old children, by town; the number of those children in the first year of secondary school; and the number of secondary school places per town. [50284/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The information requested by the Deputy on pupil statistics is not available broken down by town. The number of 12 to 18 year old post primary students, and the number of these students in first year, is available in the table, broken down by local authority area. The information given is from the 2016/2017 academic year, which is the latest year for which data is available.

I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department does not hold information in respect of post primary school places per town, as requested. In order to plan for school provision, my Department divides the country into 314 school planning areas and uses a Geographical Information System (GIS) to identify where the pressure for school places across the country will arise. The GIS uses data from a range of sources, including the Central Statistics Office, Ordnance Survey Ireland, the Department of Social Protection and my Department's own databases. With this information, my Department carries out nationwide demographic exercises at primary and post primary level to determine where additional school accommodation is needed. 

We have doubled the number of additional school places being provided at both primary and post primary level from 8,900 additional places in 2010 to 18,000 additional school places in 2017.