Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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100. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the status of plans to construct a new ASD unit for a school (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15277/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department is not in receipt of an application for additional school accommodation (ASA) from the school authority in question.

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

At primary level, this situation generally arises to cater for a school’s accommodation requirements where an additional teaching post has been sanctioned by Teacher Allocation Section, or a new SEN class has been sanctioned by the NCSE, and all available alternative accommodation within the school is already being used for classroom purposes.

It is open to the school authority to make an application for additional accommodation through the 'Additional School Accommodation scheme (ASA)' which is available at www.education.ie. Officials from my Department have engaged with the school authority in this regard.