The school referred to by the Deputy originally applied for an extension and refurbishment to provide for improved ancillary accommodation. The project proposed initially did not include additional mainstream classrooms and having regard to competing demands on the building programme the application was at that time afforded a lower priority rating.
The school submitted an application under the Small Schools Scheme 2007 for additional accommodation including mainstream classrooms. On 5 March 2007, I announced details of the schools to receive funding under this Scheme. Due to the volume of applications received in the Department it was not possible to allocate funding to all proposed projects and the school referred to by the Deputy was not successful in this instance.
The Department recently received an appeal from the school in relation to the initial decision which will be considered further.