A major issue has emerged particularly strongly in recent months, namely, the disposal of school land by religious orders. In my area, Clonkeen College is to lose its playing fields but a number of schools across the country have lost huge amounts of playing pitches belonging to them. They are zoned residential and potentially can be sold.

Is the Deputy talking about promised legislation?

Yes. I want to know whether the Taoiseach is considering or will consider addressing the legislative prohibition on compulsory purchase orders being imposed on school lands where those lands may be sold, consequently degrading the facilities of schools.

I will direct the question to the Minister for Education and Skills.

First, I will make the general point that the Department would only consider acquiring land where there is an identified need. We have a very detailed approach to identifying where need occurs. That is what we pursue. We obviously have a restricted budget and we have to cater for 15,000 additional pupils every year so we have to take an approach that manages our resources to provide schools in a timely manner. We apply that uniformly across the country. We are not a local authority planning what is the best development of a local area, which is a distinct and different matter, and that is governed by the development plan of the local authority. We manage where we need school grounds. As Members will have seen recently in Harold's Cross, we acquired such grounds. That is the position. We acquire them as we need them.

We have not considered compulsory purchase powers in respect of our need to do that because by and large we work with local authorities to identify needs. It has worked well. Generally, a compulsory purchase order, CPO, is a slow process and we have not favoured it to date.