Schools Building Projects
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-19
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Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West

I thank the Minister of State for taking this Topical debate. This is the second time I have raised a Topical matter about three primary schools, St. John Bosco Junior Boys School, St. John Bosco Senior Boys School and Mary Help of Christians Girls National School. I want to focus on the long delay in the rebuild project for these three schools. The schools are just off the Navan Road in Dublin 7, and serve the communities of Ashtown and the Navan Road. They are great schools, and my colleague Councillor Feljin Jose and I have visited them. They are operating out of incredibly old and rundown buildings. There are musty prefabs, single-glazed windows and kids learning in cold classrooms.
They are three distinct schools, but the three schools have come together with the vision of having an educational campus on the site. I am sure the Minister of State knows that bringing together three separate schools with three separate management structures is a real challenge, but the schools are so committed to this project that they have done it, and they have come together. However, there are two big problems. First, this project is not on the list of priority school projects from the 2026-27 list that the Government launched with great fanfare in January of this year. Second, and more immediately, there seems to be a real blockage in advancing this vital project past stage 2A of the school design project.
I was in contact with the three schools and with parents from the schools in late 2024 and across all of last year. In December of last year, I was able to hold a Topical debate in the House, in particular on the Department's delay in holding that stage 2A meeting with the schools’ design team. At the time, the Minister was not able to give me a date for when that vital stage 2A meeting would happen between the Department and the schools’ design team. We are now three months on from that Topical debate. I had a parliamentary question in two weeks ago, and I also wrote directly to the Minister, Deputy Naughton, two weeks ago. In the replies I got to those queries, I still have not been able to get a date for that meeting. Of course, in January, we saw that long-awaited list of the priority projects, and this project was not on it. The parents and the school saw that, and they noticed that they are not seen as a priority now.
I have no doubt the Minister of State has a lengthy reply from the Department. I am sure it will recount a long history of engagement between the Department and the relevant schools. With respect, I know the history. We do not need to go through all of that this evening. What I really want to know is, first, what the date is for the long-delayed meeting between the schools’ design team and the Department of education so they can move past the stage 2A process and, second, how this project can get on the Government's priority list. It is 6 p.m. on a Thursday. Anything else is not really of huge relevance right now. Will the Minister of State give me a date for this meeting? Will she tell me how the redevelopment of these three schools can get on the priority list?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19