Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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151. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the status of granting the final approval for an extension at a secondary school (details supplied) in County Mayo; the average timeline involved in granting final approvals; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4710/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I can confirm to the Deputy, that my Department is in receipt of an application from the school in question, for capital funding under the Additional Schools Accommodation Scheme (ASA). This application is currently being processed by my officials. The school authorities will be contacted with a decision when the assessment process has been completed.

The purpose of the ASA scheme is to ensure that essential mainstream classroom and Special Educational Needs (SEN) accommodation is available to cater for pupils enrolled each year, where the need cannot be met by the school’s existing accommodation.

As the Deputy may be aware, the National Development Plan 2021-2030 which was published on 4th Oct 2021, provides capital funding of over €4.4bn for investment in school infrastructure during the period 2021 to 2025.

The key drivers of the education sector capital programme are demographic change, alignment with housing provision and national planning at school planning area level, construction costs, catch-up to address the legacy of underinvestment and climate action objectives including deep energy retrofit. The Department has a large pipeline of projects for delivery under the school building programme. The main elements of this pipeline currently involves in excess of 1200 projects for delivery under the Department’s Large Scale and Additional Accommodation Scheme.

Given the size of the school building programme and the substantial level of exchequer funding involved, the Deputy will appreciate that applications for capital funding vary greatly in levels of complexity. All applications are carefully and fully considered including detailed technical assessment in order to arrive at the optimum decision for all stakeholders.