I should like to thank you for giving me the time to raise this matter on the adjournment and to thank also the Minister of State who has come in at fairly short notice to answer my queries.
I do not intend to delay the House very long except to say that my motion asks the Minister for Education to sanction immediately the extension to Newport Vocational School. As this House will know I rarely introduce motions on the Adjournment in this House and particularly not on what one might call a matter of a parochial nature. Newport, however, is a rapidly growing community nestling on the slopes of Slieve Felim and near Limerick city. The population has been growing consistently there and apart from having a special political interest in that development Newport was an area which I chose to travel in my young days also. It is the area from which my wife, Mary, comes.
The main building in this school is old. It was built to accommodate only 100 students. In the past 20 years about eight prefabricated buildings have been added to it to try to accommodate the growing number of students, which has now reached 226. Many of these prefabricated buildings have outlived their usefulness, and it was never intended that they would have to actually serve for as long as they have served. The school authorities in the North Tipperary Vocational Education Committee have expanded the curricula to cover a vast range of subjects, and it is acknowledged that the school is exceptionally good.
I cannot emphasise enough to the Minister the degree of frustration that has begun to develop among the school authorities — the teachers, students, the parents' council and the vocational education committee — with regard to the long delay in bringing this project to the commencement stage. It appears that at each stage, despite previous experience in submissions on other schools, despite the availability of top class consultants in quantity surveying and design and everything else which was unmatched and unchecked in previous submissions for other schools in the area, that on this occasion query after query emerged and there is a genuine feeling that these are exercises that are being introduced to slow up this project.
Because of the prefabricated nature of so many of the buildings in the school many of them will have to be moved for the new building to commence. In order not to interrupt the school session, it is fairly crucial that that work will be done during the summer holidays, to open up the possibility of starting in October, not with a total new extension, but with reasonable facilities at that time. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that sanction be given in order that that preparatory work could be concluded during the summer holidays.
I ask the Minister to make a special effort to ensure that this work can commence during the summer holidays. In order for that to happen the project must be given the go-ahead. I am not saying that all the funds will have to be available this year but it should be allowed to start and that would end the frustration that is growing in the area arising from the prolonged nature of negotiations with the Department on this whole project.