Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 31 January 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills
Briefing on Current and Future Plans for the School Building Unit: Department of Education
Mr. Hubert Loftus:
I will try to cover them as best I can. Others will come in if appropriate.
With regard to Ukraine, about which the Senator asked first, we currently have approximately 14,500 children from Ukraine in our schools. More than 9,000 of them are at primary level and more than 5,000 of them are at post-primary level. It is very positive and a great achievement for the school system and school communities and, crucially, doing that in a very inclusive and integrated way that supports the children and their well-being, given all they have been through. It is very important. A key part of that, and it is part of engagement and using our GIS, has been identifying where we have capacity by survey and information and setting up teams through and supported by education and training boards, ETBs. This has helped ensure that operates in a very streamlined and efficient way. To do that and to enrol that number of children in such a short period is a great achievement. That was more easily managed at primary level because we are in a better space, capacity-wise, at primary level. It was a greater challenge at post-primary level. We succeeded in 2022, but we are in a tighter space from 2023 onwards and we will have to look at doing backfill there and think how we will manage that. I will let Mr. Dolan cover climate and EU funding.
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