I am speaking today on behalf of St. John Bosco's junior and senior boy's schools and Mary, Help of Christians girl's school on the Navan Road in Dublin 7. I received a letter, which states: "Our community school has been waiting years for progress and despite repeated assurances from the Department, including a clear commitment that a stage 2a review would be completed in the quarter 1 of 2025, we have been informed of yet another delay." I sent that letter to the Department of Education, which responded to the effect that in early June 2025 a further meeting was held with the wider design team, the school authorities and the Department. I have since discovered that although that meeting happened in June, the documentation that should have been submitted subsequently was not submitted until four months late. The Department claims that it received the documentation on 31 October 2025. There was a delay of at least four months, despite the fact that this had been promised. Is the Minister for Education and Youth aware that the Department has had little meaningful communication with the schools and has not responded to the design team's proposals? It stated that a Department official will carry out a review addendum report but says it is not possible at present to provide a timeframe for the completion of that review. The schools were told that this would be done in the first quarter of 2025, which is nearly a year ago at this stage. We discovered that there was another delay in October and a four-month gap where nothing was done, effectively. Surely there is something amiss in the planning section of the Department. The Tánaiste spoke earlier about planning for housing but there is a big job to be done in terms of planning for schools. We get these issues raised with us constantly with regard to the planning section of the Department of education. I ask the Tánaiste to raise this with the Minister to see if we can get a resolution so that the school can be built.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue relating the Navan Road schools. I can hear the frustration in his voice on behalf of those schools. I will certainly speak with the Minister, Deputy Naughton about timelines and next steps and ask her to revert to him directly.