Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Murphy for raising this matter and for his ongoing strong representation and lobbying for St. Teresa's Special School. I will outline to the Seanad the current position on this major building project. It is included in the Department's construction programme, which is being delivered under the national development plan as part of the Project Ireland 2040 framework. Under Project Ireland 2040, the education sector will receive approximately €4.4 billion capital investment up to 2025. This will allow the Department to move ahead with projects such as St. Teresa's Special School. This investment will build on the good progress being made throughout the country to cater for demographic changes and provision for children with special educational needs. The investment will also facilitate an increased focus on the modernisation of existing school stock and help transition the school system for an era of net zero carbon by 2050.

The Senator is aware of the extensive site identification and assessment exercise, as he was in constant contact with the Minister during that time. This was to identify a permanent site location for St. Teresa's Special School. The Minister can confirm that agreement in principle has been reached with the vendor on a 4 acre site at Parkmore, Creagh, Ballinasloe, for the provision of the permanent accommodation for the school and the legal work is at an advanced stage. The major building project for St. Teresa's Special School will be delivered under the Department's accelerated delivery of architectural planning and tendering, ADAPT, programme. The ADAPT programme uses a professional external project manager to co-ordinate and drive the design team to achieve the best possible timeframe for the project.

The tender process to appoint a project manager has just been completed. The first step to be undertaken by the project manager will be the tender competitions for the appointment of design teams for a number of school building projects. This will include the appointment of the design team for the St. Teresa's Special School project. The Department will shortly be in touch with the school authorities about further developments on these appointments. Upon appointment, the design team will proceed to stage one of the architectural planning, which is preliminary design, and in which the design team will assess the site and prepare initial sketch schemes. The brief for this project is the construction of a new eight-classroom special school with significant associated ancillary accommodation on a greenfield site. The school has an enrolment of 36 pupils and a staffing of principal plus six special classes. The Department also approved additional interim accommodation of two temporary classrooms for the school in 2021 to cater for immediate needs.

I thank Senator Murphy. I know from sitting in parliamentary party meetings and speaking to the Minister, Deputy Foley, he has been incessant in speaking about this project and the need for it. Much credit goes to Senator Murphy for pushing the project through the stages and to the Government's commitment to special education, which is very important for all of us.