Mr. Hubert Loftus:

I thank the Senator for her comments about the very good work being done across the school building programme.

On inflation, we are living in a challenging construction sector environment. Wider impacts are affecting the entire construction sector, including the impacts of the war in Ukraine that are still following through, some issues relating to Brexit, general supply chain issues and so on. We dealt with that as part of updating our guidance on the basic building cost for schools. We increased that by 21% to cover the inflation period from April 2021 to May 2022. That reflected tender outcomes. Earlier this year, we had funding pressures we had to manage. Although we get allocations from the Government under the national development plan, I am conscious of those inflationary pressures and the scale of needs facing us as regards projects, urgent needs in special education, etc. That created particular funding pressures.

In fairness to the Government and our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, those pressures were recognised and additional funding was made available to help ensure a smooth, albeit prioritised, programme to deliver on those. The projects that were paused have all progressed. A cohort of those were due to go to construction and they are essentially at construction. Those that were due to go to tender are out to tender and will be going to construction. That has all been positive and helpful. Funding pressures reflect the fact that the planning building unit in the Department has a strong delivery programme, which adds its own pressures.

I will take the issues relating to PE halls, libraries, school labs and hot meals as a group. Our job in the planning building unit is to manage these pressures, prioritise them as best we can and, in terms of solutions, work them around the allocations we have to meet and other needs we have to mention. I referenced PE halls in response to Deputy Clarke. I will ask Ms Cusack to come in on libraries and hot meals.

On the questions around modular and traditional building, modular is just reflecting the direction of travel with modern methods of construction. That is the direction the industry is going in. As head of the planning and building unit, I want to make sure the school sector is not behind the curve in utilising the opportunities that come with that in terms of delivering additional capacity. Looking at the housing sector, for example, up to 50% of new houses can be timber frame construction, which is a form of modular construction. Equally, in our design and build programme, there is a lot of precast concrete, which is a modern method of construction. Ultimately, we have technical guidance. That guidance operates irrespective of whether it is a traditional build or modular build. Modular builds, and I have been in them, are really positive. We get great feedback from schools. It is a lot different from what we might have described as prefabs or things like that back in the old days. We see it as an important method for us in adding capacity into the school system.

The Senator referred to Newbridge and the primary school feeding into post-primary schools and new schools. That is something we can look at, but, ultimately, the sort of local arrangements that operate around enrolments and admissions processes are managed more at local and patron level. I might let Ms Cusack come in on some of this.