School Facilities Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09 ============================================================ Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF), Donegal The issue tonight is St. Eunan's College in Letterkenny. I recently visited the college again at the invitation of the student council. There were these outstanding young men who took me around the school. It is not the first time I have had a tour of St. Eunan's College. I have done it a number of times over the years but I have to say, I was really shocked at the current condition of the college. There are impossible conditions for both students and teachers to work in. There is the original building from 1909 and there were additions in 1979. You can clearly see the dilapidated conditions of the buildings throughout. There is no disability access in the entire college. There are lifts but they are not used, which means that students with a disability are not going to the college. The college has 1,000 students today in a school that was designed for hundreds. They have waited a long, long time. They started to engage in 1999 with the Department and the Ministers and it has just dragged on and on. For me, I find it so frustrating how long it takes to deliver public building projects in this country. I have visited the college a number of times over the years. It is desperately slow to deliver the amenities. This is a fantastic school. I do not know how it delivers the standard of education it does in the facilities it has. For example, there are eight toilet cubicles for a population of 1,000 students. If you go through the old buildings, they are in appalling conditions and there is black mould, windows are broken and boarded up, walls are damp and soaking wet as you run your hands down them and there are totally inadequate amenities for young people to congregate during lunch breaks. It is absolutely appalling. I know in the Minister of State's response, he will say that it is at the design stage and it is getting ready to go to tender. This Government has recently launched this infrastructure plan. It has to get a grip on the length of time it takes to deliver these projects. People are learning in absolutely unacceptable conditions. This a superb school that gives a superb standard of education. As are all the TDs, I am currently being lobbied by former students who are deeply proud of the history of the college. They are fighting for the next generation. The students and young people I met, who were the highest calibre of young people, will not be in that college or be in school when the new facilities are delivered. They are fighting for the next generation. They are trying to ensure that nobody has to go through and endure those conditions again. I stress to the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, that I will speak to the Minister for education, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, tomorrow. I will make it my business to personally speak to her. I wanted her to be here tonight. I will ask for an explanation as to why the senior Minister and the Minister of State were not here. I walked past the Minister of State for education in the hall. I am really disappointed about that. I mean no disrespect because the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, came here late at night to read a statement. I appreciate him doing that but he would understand, if he were in my position, the frustration I have. Those young people, parents and teachers would want the Minister for education to be present. The issue here is for the Minister to come to the school, visit the board of management, the parents’ committee and the students and do a full tour of the school. That is what I wanted to ask her to do, but I will ask her tomorrow when I see her. --- 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/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-09