Member's statement: Shared and Integrated Education Capital Funding

Member's statement by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 26 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

26 February 2024

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Shared and Integrated Education Capital Funding

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4230540

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I associate myself with the remarks about Chris Nicholl. I will speak about the news that emerged at the end of last week — shocking and unacceptable news — that shared and integrated education capital funding, totalling, it appears, £150 million, has been removed from 10 schools in Northern Ireland. I should declare an interest: I am a parent of a child who is at one of the affected schools, Forge Integrated Primary School, which was expecting to be funded. As a serving MLA and someone who follows the policy, it was shocking that I and, indeed, other parents found out that the money was being cut because we received emails from the principals of the affected schools. I have been in touch with the principals in my schools in South Belfast, including Millennium Integrated Primary School. That is a brilliant integrated primary school just outside Carryduff that had been expecting to build a new 14-base classroom and a two-class nursery. The school was also expecting to invest in special educational needs provision. This case goes far beyond South Belfast. It is shocking news, and we will seek answers from not only the Minister of Education and the UK Government but other Executive parties, because it comes after a whole range of other bits of information about the agreed financial package has leaked out. Let us face it, this was leaked or sneaked out. It was not based on an official announcement from the Minister or the Department. Boards of governors were contacted in private and given the information. That, in itself, is unacceptable, but it is also unacceptable that £150 million that was designed to be allocated to shared and integrated education — that should be a priority for all of us in the Chamber as something that we are all signed up to support under the agreement and subsequent legislation — is being cut in private and in secret. We need to know how the decision was made to reallocate the funding, which parties and Ministers knew that it was going to happen and why the Assembly was not told and had to wait until the information was sneaked out to parents, via an email, so that they could find out what was happening. What other important projects are going to lose funding as a result of the reallocation? What has been waved through by Executive parties in the rush to deal with these things? It is completely unacceptable. I hope that we get more clarity from the Education Minister on how the decision was taken, who knew that it was being taken and what will be done to support those integrated schools and shared projects that are expecting to build facilities.

454 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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