Written answers

Thursday, 28 January 2016

Department of Education and Skills

School Accommodation

Photo of Charlie McConalogueCharlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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326. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to set down the number of classes that are taught in prefabricated accommodation by county and the year in which prefabricated accommodation will be phased out. [3730/16]

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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My Department does not hold information on the numbers of pupils in individual schools who currently occupy prefabs as this depends on the organisation of class groups by schools within available accommodation and may vary from year to year.

As the Deputy will appreciate, the overall policy goal of my Department is to ensure the highest standard of permanent accommodation for all schools. In the context of a rapidly increasing school population, my Department's priority is to ensure that every child will have access to a physical school place and in this regard, it is sometimes necessary to make use of temporary accommodation in order to meet the accommodation needs of schools.

However, under the Department's Prefab Replacement Initiatives, in recent years approval was given to 209 primary and 8 post primary schools nationally to replace their rented prefab accommodation (614 units) with permanent accommodation. In excess of €57m has been allocated for these initiatives of which €52.2m has been paid to date.

In addition to this, as I recently announced, it is my intention to replace all purchased prefabs with permanent accommodation over the lifetime of my Departments new six-year capital programme (2016-2021).

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