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Schools Site Acquisitions

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 October 2018

Thursday, 18 October 2018

Questions (47)

Thomas Byrne

Question:

47. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Education and Skills the status of the 42 schools which were announced in April 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42510/18]

View answer

Oral answers (6 contributions)

This question is about the 42 new schools announced last April. I acknowledge an update was given to the Joint Committee on Education and Skills last week. I am concerned about the position of these schools, 17 of which are due to open next September. Parents have little information about them and those responsible need to let parents know what is happening, where these schools will be, how they can enrol their children and who the patrons will be.

As the Deputy has pointed out, my Department provided a comprehensive update to the Joint Committee on Education and Skills, of which he is a member, on 30 September last and has committed to providing updates regularly on the status of the 42 new schools to be provided over the next four years from 2019 to 2022.

The current focus for my Department is to prioritise the 17 schools opening in 2019 so that patrons can be appointed and accommodation solutions can be put in place as soon as possible. My Department has appointed a project manager to assist this work, and potential interim accommodation solution options have been identified for the majority of the 17 schools.

My Department's design and build programme will be the main delivery mechanism for providing permanent accommodation for the 42 new schools. A procurement process is under way to facilitate the appointment of a project manager who will assist my Department in the provision of permanent accommodation for the new schools to be established from 2020 onwards.

A patronage process is ongoing in respect of the four post-primary schools due to open in 2019 and I expect to make an announcement shortly in this regard. A patronage process for the primary schools due to open in 2019 will commence shortly thereafter.

I have several questions that require clarity. Only two of the 17 sites have permanent accommodation earmarked. There are at least two that do not even have temporary accommodation either.

As I understand it, the Minister does not have contracts signed, sealed and delivered for all other sites where the need for temporary accommodation for schools has been identified. When will the results of the patronage process be announced for the four schools which the Minister referred for consideration? Parents took part in a vote during the summer and do not know who the patrons of the schools will be, where they will be located or where they should apply to enrol their children in them. When will the patronage process start for the other schools that are due to open next September? My daughter, Sineád, is at home celebrating her 11th birthday. We are going around second level schools with a view to deciding which one she will attend. Parents are asking me where the new secondary school will be located in the Drogheda-Laytown catchment area. I do not know the answer to that question and I am the Opposition spokesperson on education. I do not know the answer because the Government has not given the answer to it. The same applies to the new primary school in Dunshaughlin which is due to open next September and on which there is no information available. Regardless of what is happening in the background, the Minister needs to get much more information out to parents on these schools.

Parents like certainty when it comes to knowing which school their children will attend. It is something I take very seriously. On ways by which the system can be improved, I will be making an announcement shortly. I am saying this publicly as the Deputy needs that certainty. There are five post-primary schools, namely, those in Donaghamede, Howth, Galway city, Laytown and Wicklow, included in the 2019 bundle, but we also have the other 17. The Deputy also asked when the process to decide the patronage of the other schools would start. I will initiate a conversation with my officials in that regard to set the process in place.

I should note, with reference to the school in the Drogheda-Laytown catchment area, that there is considerable disappointment in Duleek, County Meath. There was a campaign within the Drogheda catchment area and there is considerable disappointment that the Minister's predecessor decided not to locate a secondary school at that location. He gave the reasons, but it is the largest town in County Meath without a secondary school and I cannot overstate the disappointment felt at the decision made. Also, the schools will start on a fledgling basis. Many of them are medium-term prospects and may not necessarily be needed in every area next year, but they will have an impact on existing schools. For example, I am concerned that the Sacred Heart school in Drogheda which serves a huge catchment area covering Drogheda, south Louth and east Meath seems to have moved into the slow lane in having some relatively minor building works for which it is waiting carried out. They are minor compared to the works involved in some other projects, but essentially the school is waiting for science laboratories and other accommodation to be provided. Is the school being impacted on by the decision to locate another school in the catchment area? Is this something that will feature throughout the country?

Before I get to that point, interim measures, an issue the Deputy raised in his first question, will also be needed. It should be noted that, where necessary, an initial start-up phase is envisaged for the new schools. It will typically involve the use of interim accommodation as part of my Department's forward planning. This is the first time the requirement for new schools has been set out over a four-year horizon. It will provide for a better lead-in period in the planning and delivery of permanent accommodation solutions.

To return to the question of patronage which is important in the context of the lead-in time, parents' choices and delivering certainty, an online patronage processing system has been developed by the Department to provide objective information for all parents which will allow them to make informed choices about their preferred model of patronage for their child's education. Parental preferences were previously collected based on direct engagement with patron bodies. I take the Deputy's point about lead-in times and the mechanisms involved. They are matters on which I will be happy to work with him.

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