Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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142. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the amount spent to date of the €2.2 billion in capital expenditure the Government has committed to spending across higher education over the period 2018 to 2027 under Project Ireland 2040; the breakdown of expenditure to date by location and campus in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16196/21]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Project Ireland 2040 signals Exchequer investment of €2.2 billion in Ireland's higher education infrastructure over the period to 2027.

There are a number of ongoing higher education investment programmes including:

- Higher Education Strategic Infrastructure Fund, which is co-funding five projects, four in the university sector and one in an IoT. The Fund has a focus on facilitating capacity expansion in areas of key skills need, and leveraging non-Exchequer investments in the higher education sector;

- Infrastructure Upgrade and Refurbishment Programme, which is addressing some of the most urgent health and safety issues in the sector, while also upgrading buildings to meet current teaching and learning needs;

- Energy Efficiency and Decarbonisation Pathfinder Programme, which is co-funded with SEAI, and is testing different retrofit approaches across the sector, with a view to informing a larger scale investment programme in future;

- Devolved Capital Grant which was extended to the university sector in 2020 for the first time in a decade, having previously been limited to IoTs. This gives institutions flexible capital funding to address a range of minor works and equipment upgrade needs.

Table A below provides details of the capital spend in respect of all higher education institutions for the period in question.

This is in addition to infrastructure to be delivered by way of Public Private Partnership (PPP), including the Central and East Quads for TU Dublin at Grangegorman, which are now complete, and the Higher Education PPP programme, which is in the procurement phase and is focused on Technological Universities/Institutes of Technology. 

Table A: Capital Funding Provided to HEIs from 2018 to 2020.