Schools Building Projects
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Malcolm Byrne (FF), Wicklow-Wexford

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I appreciate it is not his Department but, frankly, there is nothing new in this. This is deeply, deeply frustrating. The challenge for this school and for the staff, the students and the wider community - and I spoke with my good friend and colleague, Councillor Barbara-Anne Murphy, who chairs the board of management of the school - is that this school is tired of, frankly, false promises from the Department. This situation has been running for well over a decade in terms of trying to move things forward.
The difficulty for the school is it sees other schools in the wider community where those projects have progressed much more quickly. As I said, I reiterate the point, in terms of the conditions that this school has to operate under, there are two campuses where students and staff have to travel - the Minister of State knows what the weather was like today - across a busy regional road, losing valuable education time. We are in a situation where the majority of the school is in prefab classes. That is not acceptable in 2026.
The Minister of State knows I am one of the most passionate advocates for investment in education in this House and support the capital building programme. Lots of work is being done. The question has to be asked as to why this project has taken so long. I invited the Minister of State with responsibility for special education, Deputy Michael Moynihan, to this school because this school has an excellent record in that area. It was willing to expand further in this area, something that not all schools are willing to do, yet we are still not seeing any progress. The Department needs to be much more honest with schools as to the exact timeframe that is involved. This is one of the worst schools I have come across in the country in terms of its physical structure, even though the quality of education is excellent. It deserves a clear answer now from the Minister for education as to when construction work will finally start.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20