EDUCATION Minister Paul Givan says the current sports hall at a West Belfast grammar school is "worse" than the one at his former school 25 years ago.

The Minister was speaking after a visit to St Mary's Christian Brothers Grammar School on Wednesday.

The Glen Road school is in the process of developing plans to build a state-of-the-art sports hall to meet the needs of the school as well as open it up for the local community to use. The Minister was presented with a petition of over 1,000 hand-written letters from pupils at the school, detailing why they deserve better sports facilties.

Minister Givan also tried his hand at hurling as he was given a short tour of the school's current sports facilities, including the dilapidated sports hall.

Speaking during the visit, Education Minister Paul Givan said: "Sport is a great thing for everyone to be involved in and something I particularly enjoyed when I was at school.

"25 years ago, the school that I went to had a better sports hall than the one I am currently standing in.

"There are over 1,000 boys here and you want them to be able to access proper facilities and they are not able to do that.

"The school is in the process of having the design work carried out and getting it ready for, if funding was available. I want to support St Mary’s in getting to that stage, as I do with many schools across Northern Ireland.

"I am deeply frustrated that school principals have buildings that aren’t fit for purpose. A recent report stated there are hundreds of millions of pounds that needs invested in our school estates.

"I will continue to make the case for more funding into education."

Principal Brendan McComb welcomed the visit from the Minister and said the school will continue to "make noise" over their need for a new sports hall.

"It was encouraging that he recognised the legitimacy of our case, which is the development of our sports hall," he said.

"He talked about the complexities of the funding and if it is available when it comes to the process being finalised.

"All we can do is fight our own corner and make as much noise as we can to ensure our sports hall is top of the Minister’s list.

"There is a demand in the local community to use our facilities.

"We make the most of the facilities we have but we need a bigger and prestigious sports hall that matches the ambition of our school."

This is the second time in a week that Minister Givan has visited West Belfast. Last Wednesday he was on the Whiterock Road meeting young people from Fóram na nÓg to hear about Irish language youth provision.