Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 6 Nov 2024

I thank the Minister of State for being here. I accept that the senior Minister is not here. I did say that we really want to get behind what we have here in responses to written questions. We have detail but what the parents and local school community want are clear indications particularly on timelines. I had indicated that in my response to the Minister. I hope this can be a fruitful engagement.

This really is a question of three issues, as I see it. It is a question of communication, and poor communications from the Department in particular to the local school community. It is a question of delay and the impact of that delay on the school community. In terms of delay, the latest response we have received indicates that this project will go to tender in quarter 4 of 2024. This is frustrating for the school community because there has been delay on that. There were indications last year that the project would go to tender early in 2024, then in mid-2024, then in quarter 3 and now quarter 4 of 2024. As the Minister of State might appreciate, there is concern that this slippage will continue. The school community wants some assurance that it will in fact go to tender in quarter 4. Maybe the Minister of State can provide us with some clarification in that regard.

The impact of that delay is very clear. I will wait to hear from the Minister of State on the cause in terms of the building project itself. In the meantime, we have contingency planning. This school community is being accommodated in the grounds of the local GAA club. There was supposed to be temporary accommodation provided in the meantime to meet the expanding school community for this school year. Incredibly, despite me and others raising this issue and the local school community sitting on this issue and chasing the Department and responsible authorities, the temporary accommodation was not in place for the start of the school year. It means one of the classes has to be accommodated in the GAA hall. In fairness to them, I want to read a letter that some of the third class pupils sent to local representatives. It is appropriate for the Minister of State to hear it as well. It was sent in September and these children are still not accommodated in their temporary accommodation:

We are third class pupils from Dunshaughlin Community National School. We would like to share our concern that we do not have a classroom. As there is a delay on our classroom, we must use the GAA clubhouse as a classroom. This area is a shared space so we cannot leave our belongings in it, we cannot keep our library books, toys or electronics in the space. It is also inconvenient for our families when they are collecting us and our siblings. We would like to request a classroom on Dunshaughlin Community National School ground as soon as possible. We hope you will consider our request and we look forward to your response. Yours sincerely, the pupils of third class, Dunshaughlin Community National School.

That is specifically on the issue of temporary accommodation while planning is progressed for the school building itself. The Minister of State can see the implications of it. I await his initial reply.

I thank Deputy Darren O'Rourke for raising the issue of plans and timeline for delivery of a new school building for Dunshaughlin Community National School, Dunshaughlin, County Meath. The school building project for Dunshaughlin Community National School is part of the Department’s construction programme and will be delivered as part of a campus project that will provide a new eight-classroom primary school and accommodation, including two classrooms for children with special educational needs for Dunshaughlin CNS and a new 1,000-pupil post-primary school and accommodation, including four classrooms for children with special educational needs for Coláiste Ríoga.

The project currently has planning permission and is, along with a number of other projects, being brought to the level of employer-led design with a design team assigned to do so under the supervision of the Department’s project manager. The process of appointing the design team from the Department’s frameworks of consultants was completed in September 2023 and the project is currently close to completion of stage 2b of the architectural design process. Stage 2b involves detailed design and the preparation of tender documentation. The next stage, subject to relevant stage 2b approvals, will be stage 3, which is the tender stage.

Planning permission for Dunshaughlin CNS was granted on 4 November 2020. In the event that an extension to the current planning permission is required, the Department's project manager will arrange for the preparation of the necessary documentation for same in due course. The project is currently anticipated to progress to tender in quarter 4 of 2024 subject to relevant stage 2b approvals. Projects are subject to relevant due diligence at each stage in the process, within the context of overall programme and budgetary parameters.

The Department will continue to liaise with the school and patron body in relation to interim accommodation requirements and provide any updates in relation to progress on the school building project. The school is currently located in interim accommodation on the Dunshaughlin GAA site. The Department has provided two additional classrooms to meet the school’s accommodation requirements for the 2024 and 2025 school years.

BCAR documentation is due to be uploaded to the building control management system of the local authority in the coming days. Once BCAR validation has been received, the school can occupy the accommodation.

There is nothing new in that at all. I finished my last contribution with the children's letter about the temporary accommodation and the delay with that. There is concern with all of the delay in this project.

The bigger problem is that the current situation is not suitable accommodation at all. That is why we need a new school building. I will point to the lack of an indoor hall, shortage of yard space and no real facilities. Certain fundamental aspects of normal school life have been denied to these children because they do not have a school building. It is a new school and they do not have a school building.

What the parents and the whole school community, most importantly the children themselves, need to hear is an indication from the Minister of State in terms of timelines. He said it would be quarter 4 in 2024. That is to get to tender stage, which is stage 3. What can parents expect in terms of progress after that? Is there a firm commitment that the target of quarter 4 2024 will be met for stage 3, that it will move to stage 4, construction, and then to stage 5, which is handover and final accommodation? What are the indicative timelines? Can the Minister of State give confidence to the people who are watching this or will watch it later that those timelines will be met? As I stated, a big feature of this whole project has been commitment and delay, missed targets and missed deadlines. The Minister of State will appreciate that it is hugely frustrating for the whole school community. Can he provide those assurances on quarter 4 2024 and the stages that come after it? How long will it take? When will these children be in their new school building?

I thank the Deputy. Since 2020, the Department has invested more than €5 billion in our schools throughout the country involving the completion of more than 950 school building projects and with construction currently under way at approximately 350 other projects, which includes 37 new school buildings. These 350 projects currently in construction involve a total State investment of more than €1.5 billion. The Department announced earlier this year that close to 90 projects, including 28 new school buildings, would be authorised to proceed from tender stage to construction over the course of 2024 and early 2025. In total, around €800 million will be invested in these projects under the Department's large-scale capital programme and additional accommodation scheme for essential classroom accommodation. This is a record level of investment in school buildings. It will expand the number of school places, will significantly increase provision for special education and will upgrade and modernise school infrastructure. The impact of this will be felt in communities right around the country. I can assure the Deputy that the Dunshaughlin school campus project is a continuing priority for the Department. The Department will continue to liaise with the school and patron body with regard to the interim accommodation requirements and will provide any updates with regard to the progress of the school project as is necessary.

I wish to raise with the Minister of State today the issue of public transport in Wicklow. It is one of the main issues people talk to me about. Constituents are being absolutely let down and failed by the Government's approach when it comes to the delivery of public transport. We could see no better or clearer example of that than the absolute chaos on the N11 every single morning. It is worse than it was before Covid-19. There are no longer any peaks on the N11. It is constantly one peak. It is always busy no matter what time one goes onto it.

However, it is not just the N11 where we can see the impacts of failure within Government policy when it comes to public transport provision. It is near impossible to get around Bray, Wicklow town, Greystones, Blessington and every single town at the moment with the level of cars trying to move around them. That is all because we do not have sufficient public transport.

The people in those cars who are making those 1 km journeys around their various towns in the county or those who are stuck on the N11 trying to get into work want to get public transport. The problem is that the public transport is either not there for them or it is not reliable. We have a situation in Wicklow, and it is seen across many parts of the country, where buses that are meant to show up do not show up, or when buses do show up, they are too full and drive past people who are waiting at stops. If people cannot guarantee that they are going to be able to get their bus and get into work, they are not going to be able to rely on it. People cannot continually go into their workplace and say, "I am sorry, but my bus did not show up." People need a reliable and regular service.

The people in Wicklow are not looking for the sun, moon and stars when it comes to public transport. They are looking for very basic public transport provision. They are looking for buses that show up and that will bring them directly to hospitals, such as the 145. There is no direct link now to St. Vincent's hospital from Bray. People are looking for buses that will pick up. We have a situation where a bus will do a drop in Blessington but will not pick people up. The exact same bus on its return journey will not pick people up at the same spot because of some contractual issue the National Transport Authority, NTA, has overseen. It is crazy kind of stuff. There are always problems with the 133 in Newtownmountkennedy. Despite it being raised by multiple people, we are not seeing solutions being put in place. In Greystones, the buses will leave the train station before the DART has arrived. People get the DART and come out of the station to see the bus heading off into the horizon because it has not waited for them. This is basic stuff. Extra carriages are needed on trains. The train coming from Wicklow to Greystones and into Dublin has three carriages when it is absolutely full to the brim every single morning. There is not a single bus link between Wicklow town and Greystones, which has the DART station in it. These are two big towns on the east coast and there is not a single bus link between them. What we are looking for is the Government to provide the absolute basic and then, hopefully, expand to a transformative solution when it comes to public transport. It has to get the basics right, however, and unfortunately, people in Wicklow are not seeing that.

On behalf of the Minister for Transport, I thank Deputy Whitmore for raising the important issue of public transport for Wicklow.

Improving public transport services and infrastructure is central to improving citizens’ quality of life and addressing our climate action challenge, and this Government is committed to a fundamental change in the nature of transport in Ireland. The National Transport Authority has statutory responsibility for transport planning in the greater Dublin area, GDA, including County Wicklow. The NTA's greater Dublin area transport strategy, which was approved by the Minister for Transport in January 2023, sets out a framework for transport investment across the region over a 20-year period from 2022 to 2042, and it provides a clear statement of transport planning policy for counties Meath, Dublin, Louth, Kildare and Wicklow.

I consider it useful to clarify the planned proposals related to the DART+ Coastal South project and the current position of the proposals and related issues. Modelling undertaken by the NTA for the DART+ programme related to facilitating increased rail services on the Rosslare to Dublin line. This includes an option that would allow Rosslare train services to interchange with the DART at Wicklow or Greystones to connect seamlessly to DART services to or from the heart of Dublin. It must be stressed that this is an infrastructural modelling exercise, and the NTA has advised that no decision has yet been made to alter services on the Rosslare line.

As a Government, we need to provide more options to people in order that they can make the switch to sustainable mobility and within the greater Dublin area, work on the DART+ programme is continuing so it can become part of those options. It is also intended under the GDA transport strategy to further expand the DART to Wicklow town. Extending the DART to Wicklow is also supported in the all-island strategic rail review, which was published in July this year. Design work is ongoing at present by the NTA on the DART+ Coastal South project to plan for the enhanced DART service level from Dublin to Greystones, and a public consultation will be undertaken with regard to those proposals shortly.

In addition, initial planning-design work is currently ongoing by the NTA to establish the feasibility of operating an hourly DART service to and from Wicklow town and Dublin using battery-electric trains that could operate along an unelectrified section of the railway between Greystones and Wicklow. Under this arrangement, one DART per hour arriving at Greystones would be a battery-electric train, which would be able to continue further south along the unelectrified line and terminate at Wicklow town train station, with the same approach in the opposite direction.

Beyond DART services, Bray will be served by BusConnects bus services in the near future. Phase 6a of the network redesign will roll out in early December with the new 24-hour E spine connecting Bray with the city centre and the local L routes connecting Bray and its environs. In addition to the new services, the NTA has submitted a planning application for the Bray to city centre core bus corridor to An Bord Pleanála.

An Bord Pleanála has not yet made a decision on this application. In terms of light rail, a Luas line to Bray is one of the four Luas extensions identified in the greater Dublin Area Transport Strategy 2022-2042 and the development of the Luas line from Bray to the city centre is part of the strategy's medium-term proposals for development and delivery within 2031-2036.

With all due respect, what the Minister of State has read out is a wish list. The majority of what is contained in his response does not relate to projects that are actually happening and that people would be able to see and use in the near future.

He spoke about the Luas to Wicklow and modelling - just modelling - the DART+ programme. There is no actual project plan or funding there. With regard to the extension of the DART to Wicklow town, the NTA has been very clear that will be five or six years down the road assuming everything goes well, that funding is provided to it and planning permission is received for it. These are all long-term projects. I welcome them and know it takes time to get them in place but what are people in Wicklow meant to do in the meantime? Due to the capacity and issues we see in public transport in Wicklow, people in Wicklow will not be able to wait for five, six or ten years for this or the next Government to get this right.

That is what I am saying - to get back to basics. Put buses in. They are easy to buy and operate. Put LocalLink buses in, small buses that go around our towns and that pick people from their homes and their estates. Ease that traffic that is clogging up our main streets. Put extra carriages on. Why we do not have trains with a sufficient number of carriages in Wicklow is just beyond me.

The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, a Green Party TD, is the Minister for the environment and Minister for Transport, and the fact the public transport system in Wicklow is so poor is a really big reflection on his capacity to be able to deliver. This is not rocket science. All we are looking for are buses that actually perform the service they are meant to perform. We will be handing out €8 billion in fines to Europe in 2030 if we do not meet our emissions target and transport is the one area in which our emissions are continually going up. Rather than paying a cheque for €8 billion to Europe where we will see no advantage from it I ask that the Minister and whoever is in government next invest heavily in public transport infrastructure to assist and invest in our communities and to assist people in getting buses and trains to work, school or down town when they need to go shopping.

The Minister for Transport thanks the Deputy for her comments and I will bring them to his attention. In terms of current developments, design work is ongoing on the DART+ coastal south project to plan for the enhanced DART service level to Greystones and a public consultation for this project is planned to take place shortly.

The proposal to extend the DART to Wicklow town, which is currently under consideration by the NTA would allow an early DART service from Wicklow town to Dublin city centre, significantly enhancing the train service to and from Wicklow town.

At a later stage, when the infrastructural proposals are finalised and in development, detailed train operating timetables will be prepared. This timetabling exercise will consider both interchange services where passengers will change from diesel services to DART trains at Wicklow, and the potential for some direct non-DART services running to Dublin city centre.

As previously noted, I look forward to the rollout of the E-spine bus service as part of BusConnects, connecting Bray to the city centre next month and I await the outcome of the planning application for the Bray to city centre core bus corridor. This will help to provide a sustainable, frequent and reliable bus transport service for those living in Bray and along the corridor.

In the longer term, I also look forward to the progression of a Luas extension to Bray to provide for more sustainable transport options to the town in line with our current goals. I assure the Deputy projects will be progressed in line with the requirements of the infrastructure guidelines and that the public consultation processes will be undertaken at the appropriate stages as projects are progressed.