It is a rainy day, and on rainy days staff in Coolmine Community School in my constituency, Dublin West, have to set out between 40 and 50 plastic buckets across the school to deal with water flowing into corridors, classrooms, toilets and offices. That water flows from over 100 leaks in the roof of the school. Coolmine is a big school, with almost a thousand pupils, and has provided top-class education for students across Dublin 15 for decades. It is, however, an old school. The building is now over 50 years old and is literally falling apart. I have known this school well over many years and have had the opportunity to visit it twice in the past six months. On the second occasion, it was raining and I saw a teacher trying to divert a rivulet of water coming in through a classroom ceiling away from the electrics for the white screen in that classroom. That is thousands of euro worth of damage risked in just one classroom, and the same thing is happening all across the school. Beyond the health and safety concerns to which these conditions give rise, there is the disruption to education whereby teachers are distracted by having to manage the inflow of water, and, in particular, the disruption to the normal, everyday activities of the school. Almost 1,000 students walk the corridors of the school every 40 minutes, and they literally have to navigate an obstacle course between all the buckets on the floors. TDs come in here and overstate matters. I am not overstating this. Each of the corridors has five, six or seven buckets laid across it just to collect the water. The school's management team, the principal and deputy principals, has been proactive and submitted an emergency works application for the roof in November. That is application No. 3484. They got a visit from the Department's emergency works team in March. The Department thought about it and then asked the school for a full survey. That full survey is in and now the school is waiting to hear back from the Department in terms of the outcome. The roof is still leaking. Leaving certificate examinations are taking place today, but someone is probably putting out buckets in Coolmine right now. The school has complied with all the Department's requests for documentation and has followed all the procedures for emergency works applications. This is on the Department. The Department has not met its timelines in terms of the responses it has given to the school management team. The state of the roof in Coolmine is known to the Department and to the Minister, Deputy McEntee. The Minister visited the school in February of this year. She contacted me earlier. I know she cannot be here to address this matter directly, and I appreciate her contacting me. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, has some good news for the students in Coolmine, the teachers, the other staff and the parents. I do not want to hear about lengthy assessments. I do not want to hear that the school has a load of follow-ups to bring through. I do not want to hear about the school having to go back to a previous contractor. I want the Minister of State to confirm to me that the school's emergency works application, No. 3484, has been granted and that it will have the opportunity to go rapidly to tender, get this work done, or as much of it as can be done, over the summer holidays, and be ready for students coming back in September.

Sentiment score: -0.03

I thank the Minister of State for his response. The line, "The Department advised the school to obtain a new leak detection test", when there are a hundred buckets on the floor, is worthy of "Yes Minister". The school put in an application for an upgrade because it does need a new roof. It was then told, "No, you cannot go under that pathway; you have to go for an emergency works pathway." The school has now done that, which is why this delay has occurred. The Minister of State has told me in detail about the climate action summer works scheme. That is a great scheme - it is fantastic - but that is not relevant here because this is not a matter of energy saving or climate action; it is a matter of the roof leaking in a hundred places. I do not feel that this issue is being addressed by the Department with the urgency that is required. I probably should have said earlier that I sat on the board of management of this school for about four and a half years, during which time it undertook some work on the roof. It was a massive job. Work of this nature means that classrooms are not available because of the noise and disturbance caused. Summer is the ideal time to do this work. If we are waiting for the Department to make up its mind, it has not even indicated that it will make up its mind. It will go back and tell the principal the next steps. If we eventually get a positive outcome from the Department, it is not looking like this will be decided any time soon. There is a bigger question about Coolmine and the need to do a complete rebuild. The building is more than 50 years old. It has been a great school but it is not fit for purpose for 1,000 students. This is something that I and other Deputies will raise with the Minister in the future. However, right now, I cannot stress enough the urgency of the Department coming back and getting an answer to the emergency works application by the school to allow this to proceed. I ask the Minister of State to press this with the Minister and the Department of Education and Youth.

Sentiment score: 0.05