Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 6 December 2022
311. Deputy Joe O'Brien asked the Minister for Education the reason for the recommendation from her Department to remove the school site objective on the phase 3 Golden Ridge site in Rush, County Dublin as part of its submission to the draft Fingal County Council Development Plan 2023-2027. [60634/22]
View answerMy Department undertakes forward planning activity to identify future school requirements to a high degree. My Department engages with the local authority statutory planning process, conducts its own demographic analysis and uses the combined information to project school place requirements.
In regard to the statutory planning process, Core Strategy figures, are published by the local authorities in their statutory plans and are required to be consistent with the National Planning Framework. In order to ensure this consistency, these statutory plans must include details of where future growth is to be distributed within the relevant area over the lifetime of the plan together with details of population and household projections and the quantum of lands to be zoned for residential and mixed uses. My Department is included among the prescribed bodies to whom local authorities are statutorily obliged to send draft development and local area plans or proposed variations to development plans for comment and observations. My Department engages actively with the statutory planning process and where future population projections for an area indicate the likely future need for a new school to serve that area, my Department requests that a school site be zoned in the statutory plan to cater for a future need. This enables local authorities to reserve future school sites in areas designated for proposed housing development. My Department’s input to the recent Fingal Development Plan 2023 – 2029 is part of a series of ongoing engagements with the Council in relation to population development around the Fingal area and the identification of future school place requirements therein.
A site in Goldenridge was identified by Fingal County Council, under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding with my Department to assist in the identification of suitable school sites. This site option was to provide permanent accommodation for GS Ros Eo. My Department withdrew from the purchase of the site in Goldenridge due to unforeseen circumstances which arose during the conveyancing stage of the acquisition in 2019. Given that there was a pressing requirement for the delivery of GS Ros Eo, it was decided that my Department would deliver the permanent accommodation for the school as part of a campus arrangement with St Joseph’s Secondary School at a reserved school site in Kenure as identified in Fingal County Council’s Rush/Kenure Local Area Plan. This site has since been acquired. The school campus building project has been devolved to a delivery team and the design team has been appointed.
