Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 October 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Current and Future Plans of the School Building Unit: Department of Education

Mr. Hubert Loftus:

The general position is more that we do the best we can but balance that relative to the numbers involved, what the demographics say and how we support that. We support that also through subject choice through Zoom and things like that on island schools with regard to some of the more specialist subjects. Certainly, we can come back to that. I do not know whether Ms Cusack wants to add anything about Inishbofin, but before she does, I will cover the modern methods of construction question.

As I said earlier, we have a variety of delivery mechanisms for our school building programme. We think they are important to have to add capacity to the system and use every opportunity we have available to us. We have done much work in the area of modern methods of construction and modular accommodation. We put in place a framework of suppliers that helps to ensure easier roll-out facilitation. That framework also includes timber frame modular options.

Regarding projects, in recent years, around 160-odd modular projects were completed and another 200 or so are in the pipeline. It is active, positive and welcomed by schools in the main. We are very proud of what we are doing.

On public private partnerships, PPP, it is not currently an avenue used for new projects. There are a number of existing PPP bundles in the system, which will be working their way through. However, we are not pursuing them currently.

Does Ms Cusack wish to add anything on Inishbofin?