Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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234. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason parents in Duleek, County Meath are excluded from the patronage competition for a new secondary school in areas (details supplied). [30525/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, the Government recently announced plans for the establishment of 42 new schools over the next four years (2019 to 2022), including a new 600 pupil post-primary school to be established in 2019 to serve the Drogheda and Laytown school planning areas as a regional solution. This announcement follows nationwide, demographic exercises carried out by my Department into the future need for primary and post-primary schools across the country and the 4-year horizon will enable increased lead-in times for planning and delivery of the necessary infrastructure.

A patronage process is run after it has been decided, based on demographic analysis, that a new school is required.  This patronage process is open to all patron bodies and prospective patrons.  Parental preferences for each patron, from parents of children who reside in the school planning areas concerned, together with the extent of diversity currently available in these areas, are key to decisions in relation to the outcome of this process. 

An Online Patronage Process System (OPPS) has been developed by my Department to provide objective information to all parents which will allow them to make an informed choice about their preferred model of patronage for their child’s education. Parental preferences were previously collected based on direct engagement with patron bodies. The Online Patronage Process System (OPPS) website is currently live for the post-primary schools to be established in 2019.

All new schools established since 2011 to meet demographic demand are required to prioritise enrolments from the designated school planning area(s) which the school was established to serve.  Therefore, only parents of eligible children residing in the relevant school planning area(s) can express a preference with regard to the patronage of the new school. This does not preclude schools from enrolling pupils from outside of the designated school planning area, rather it reflects the need to accommodate in the first instance the demographic for which the school was established.

As the Deputy may be aware, there are currently 27 primary schools located in the Drogheda school planning area, including 2 primary schools in Duleek. Parents of children, including children attending a primary school in Duleek, who are due to start post-primary education in the 5 year period 2019 to 2023 and who are resident in the Drogheda school planning area may be eligible to express a preference with regard to the patronage of the new post-primary school. Parents can visit the OPPS website at https://patronage.education.gov.ieto check their eligibility and to view the relevant school planning area map.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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235. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the townlands and district electoral divisions included in each of the school planning areas in which a second-level school patronage competition is under way. [30526/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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In order to plan for school provision and analyse the relevant demographic data in a way that takes account of the significant local and regional variations in demographic trends and enrolment projections, my Department divides the country into 314 school planning areas, of which some 40 are in Dublin. 

Using school planning area boundaries within my Department’s Geographic Information System (GIS) allows data within those boundaries, including data for enrolments in schools, child benefit and other relevant data to be added to the mapping information, grouped and analysed.  The GIS records the number of primary and post-primary schools within each planning area, the combined enrolments for all of the schools within each area, including total enrolment and enrolment in each class group, together with child benefit data for the 0-4 age group relevant to the area.

In most areas, school planning areas were based on traditional school catchment areas where all primary schools were assigned to a post-primary feeder area (typically a population centre or town), containing one or more post-primary schools.  The school planning areas were developed for use with the GIS in 2008 and with the introduction of Small Areas in Census 2011, these areas were amended to align with Census Small Areas. The current school planning areas take account not only of local groupings of schools, but also of natural boundaries, Census Small Areas and other local conditions. These school planning areas are used in the demographic exercise as a basis for the assessment of areas of growth and to inform recommendations on the establishment of any new schools required in that school planning area.

As the school planning areas were aligned with the Census Small Areas and a townland or electoral division can fall into more than one school planning area, the information is not readily available in the format requested by the Deputy.

A patronage process is currently under way in respect of four post-primary schools announced to be established in 2019 for the following school planning areas:

- Laytown and Drogheda (Regional Solution),

- Galway City and Oranmore (Regional Solution),

- Donaghmede_Howth_D13; and

- Wicklow.

A list of the Census Small Areas which are located within each of the above school planning areas are outlined in the following link for the Deputy's information.