Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I confirm to the Deputy that an application for major capital funding has been received from the school in question.

There are significant demand pressures on the school system at present arising from demographic growth, the need to align school place provision with housing developments, increased demand for special educational needs provision and the accommodation of children from Ukraine.

Under Project Ireland 2040, in excess of €5 billion will be invested in school infrastructure during the period 2021 to 2025. The Deputy will appreciate the Department's priority in recent years has been providing additional capacity to ensure that every child has a school place, including children with special educational needs, and this continues to be the case.

The application from the school in question was assessed under the additional school accommodation, ASA, scheme. The purpose of the ASA scheme is to ensure that essential mainstream classroom and special educational needs, SEN, accommodation is available to cater for pupils enrolled each year, where the need cannot be met by the school's existing accommodation. At primary level, this situation generally arises to cater for a school's accommodation requirements where an additional teaching post has been sanctioned by my Department, or a new special class has been sanctioned by the National Council for Special Education, and all available alternative accommodation within the school is already being used for classroom purposes.

The Department has indicated to the school authority in question that it is willing to provide modular accommodation for a special education teaching room at the school. The Department awaits a reply from the school authorities in relation to this. It is also open to the school in question to apply for my Department's emergency works scheme, which will consider applications for funding to address any immediate health and safety issues.

The main focus of my Department's capital allocation over the last decade and for the coming period is on provision of critical additional capacity to cater for increasing demographics. The Department is required to manage the overall school building programme so that we target and prioritise areas that are under greatest pressure for additional school places. This reflects our fundamental objective of ensuring the availability of a school place for every child.

The Department has a strong track record of project delivery. From 2018 to 2022, nearly 900 school building projects were completed under a variety of delivery mechanisms. Some 300 projects are under construction during 2023, of which 40 are new school buildings.

The overall position with regard to potential modernisation and upgrade of existing infrastructure will be kept under review as capital funding allocations are clarified.

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