Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)

I am taking this matter on behalf of my colleague the Minister for education, Deputy McEntee, who is unfortunately unavailable this evening. I thank Deputy Sherlock for raising this matter as it provides me with an opportunity to clarify the position in relation to the repurposing works undertaken at George’s Hill primary school in 2022. The Deputy may be aware that George’s Hill is a Catholic, co-educational primary school. The school has a current enrolment of 165 pupils and a staffing level of a principal, nine mainstream class teachers and three special class teachers.

The project approved by the Department of Education and Youth in 2022 provided accommodation for three special classes and associated ancillary accommodation for students with special educational needs. In addition, repurposing works were completed to provide a general-purpose area and a rooftop play area. This project was delivered under the Department's devolved special educational needs reconfiguration and modular accommodation programme. This programme involves the use of project management supports that are designed to enable the accommodation to be provided as quickly as possible and help ease the administrative workload for school authorities in the management and delivery of projects. The project was completed in 2022.

The school principal made contact with the Department of Education and Youth’s planning and building unit earlier this year relating to a request for further works. It appears that the works described may fall within the scope of the Department’s emergency works scheme. The advice given to the principal was that the next step was for the school to submit an application under the emergency works scheme for consideration. The Department has no record of receiving an application from the school and will make contact with the school directly in this regard.

Since 2020, the Department of Education and Youth has invested over €6 billion in schools throughout the country under the national development plan, involving the completion of over 1,300 school building projects. Government support for this investment, including by way of supplementary capital funding, has delivered real benefits for school communities. Supplementary capital funding of €210 million was approved by the Government and has brought the total capital allocation for 2025 for the Department of Education and Youth to €1.6 billion.

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