Since our school was established in June 2014 many people have worked tirelessly to find and secure a site for our permanent accommodation. On Wednesday, I received the wonderful news that this quest had finally come to an end, the Department of Education had signed contracts for the acquisition of a 4 acre greenfield site for our school in Broomfield, Malahide.
This news means that we will, at last, be part of a community. We are looking forward to embedding ourselves in this community by further developing our links with the local schools, clubs and businesses. Our children will be able to walk or cycle safely to school. They will have the same ability to access the local secondary school as their neighbours. We will have a purpose built school with larger classrooms, a PE hall and outside play spaces.
I would like to thank everyone who has got us to this stage: our two Boards of Management, our parent body, our Community Links Committee, our patron body Educate Together, the Site and Acquisition section of the Department of Education, our local councillors, our local politicians who raised awareness of our situation at the Dáil (Alan Farrell, Aodhán O’Riordán, Duncan Smith, Brian McDonagh, Joe O'Brien and Louise O'Reilly), Darragh O'Brien who arranged for us to meet the Minister of Education and continued to follow up since that meeting and Minister Norma Foley herself.
We look forward to working with the Department of Education to make our dream a reality.