The school building project referred to by the Deputy is continuing to progress through the stages of architectural planning and its priority band rating remains unchanged at Band 1.2. My Department's over-riding objective in identifying school building projects to progress to tender and construction is to ensure that every child has access to a physical school place and that our school system is in a position to cope with increasing pupil numbers. To ensure that this is achieved, the delivery of major school projects to meet significant demographic demands nationally will be the main focus for capital investment in schools in the coming years. The Five Year school building programme that I announced in March 2012 is focused on meeting those demographic needs.
The Deputy will be aware that last week, I also announced a €50 million investment in new school building projects as part of the Government's "Investing in Infrastructure & Jobs" Package. The projects considered for inclusion in that package were all at a significantly more advanced stage of architectural planning than the school referred to by the Deputy. It is not possible to progress all projects within the Department's building programme to construction concurrently due to competing demands on the Department's capital budget.
The Major Building Project at the school referred to by the Deputy is currently at an early stage of architectural planning. Once it has completed stage 2(a) the project will then progress to Stage 2(b) which is the final design stage in the architectural planning process and includes the application for Planning Permission, Fire Certification, Disability Access Certification (DAC) and the preparation of tender documents.
School building projects, including the project referred to by the Deputy, which have not been included in the five year construction programme, but which were previously initiated will continue to be progressed to final planning stages in anticipation of the possibility of further funds being available to the Department in the future.
