Schools Building Projects
Seanad Éireann — 2025-10-02
============================================================

Garret Kelleher (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I thank the Minister of State for his understanding of the issue. His points were spot on - why wait when the demand is already there? I appreciate the Minister of State coming in and that he was given notes by the Department but I dispute that there is adequate accommodation in the school at the moment. We as a school community need to address that to ensure the correct decision is arrived at. Otherwise, it would be a waste of money. This is not something new. In 1987, a second secondary school was built in Ballincollig, Coláiste Choilm. The Minister for Education at the time said a school built for 400 pupils would be absolutely adequate. Today, there are over 1,400 in that secondary school. We do not want the same mistake to be made again. We want to get this right at the outset. Now is the time to get it right and give the school board of management and school community the chance to develop and grow in the new school building. It is vital that the new school is correct and that it is, at a minimum, a 16-classroom school.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-10-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:10+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-02