Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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161. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to undertake a comprehensive fire safety audit of all high-risk buildings, including temporary structures and especially schools, that are under the remit of his Department. [40602/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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My Department has recently published an Invitation to Tender on the Governments e-tenders website for fire safety consultants to carry out fire safety audits of a representative sample of 25 to 30 schools constructed over the last 20 years to confirm their compliance with Fire Safety Certificates.

This exercise is being undertaken as a proactive, extra precaution by my Department on foot of recent concerns regarding fire safety in a small number of recently completed schools. Separate actions are being undertaken to address the issues with those buildings. 

The selection of a school to be included in this audit in no way means that my Department has concerns about that particular school.  The audit exercise is intended to give my Department a clear picture of whether there are any issues arising in respect of compliance with fire safety certificates in school building projects completed in the past 20 years or currently under construction.