School Facilities Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09 ============================================================ Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF), Donegal I thank the Minister of State for communicating the current position of the Department and the Minister. The Minister, Deputy Naughton, is obviously new to her role. The previous Minister in this portfolio, Deputy McEntee, visited the school and, indeed, considering the seriousness of it, the Minister in this role before her, Deputy Foley, also visited the school. My understanding is that the Minister, Deputy Foley, did not get a full tour of the facilities. That is absolutely essential for any Minister. I appeal to the Minister, Deputy Naughton, to come to Donegal as soon as possible to do a full tour of St. Eunan’s College because it is utterly unacceptable. I am going to say it again: this is an outstanding school with an outstanding educational culture. I do not know how they do it but the teachers and students together deliver a standard of education that is superb, despite the absolutely unacceptable conditions they operate in. Those young people toured me around the school and we met with the principal. I could see the respect. While a number of teachers were present, it was the young people themselves who led the way. They are the leaders of the future but they deserve better. They are calling on public representatives and the Government to make sure that no student goes through this type of situation in the future. I am asking the Minister of State to communicate that to his colleague, the Minister, Deputy Naughton. I have gone ahead with this Topical Issue in good faith tonight, but I ask that it is communicated to the Minister to please come up to Donegal to meet with those students whom I met. If she does the exact tour I did, I have no doubt she will be motivated to urgently progress this project and get it built as soon as possible. --- 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