Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Since 2018, there has been in excess of €3 billion invested in Capital Infrastructure in the Education Sector for schools at Primary and Post Primary level.

The delivery of Special Education Needs (SEN) provision is a key priority under the NDP. The Department has delivered permanent additional and replacement accommodation for 318 classrooms for special education needs and additional and replacement capacity for 122 classrooms in 22 special schools during NDP period 2018 to date. A further 800 school building projects which are currently progressing under the NDP will deliver over 1,600 additional and replacement classrooms for special education needs and in excess of 400 additional and replacement classrooms in 42 Special Schools. In excess of 100 of these projects are currently in construction activity which will ultimately deliver classroom spaces for over 1,700 pupils with special education needs.

Taken together, this will enable new additional or modernised accommodation at 50% of our special schools; and 60% of our post-primary schools either have an existing special class or have a project on the School Building Programme which will provide SEN accommodation.

In addition to Special Education Needs places being delivered through the normal School Building Programme, accelerated delivery of Special Education Needs provision through provision of modular accommodation projects and reconfiguration of existing areas in schools is being delivered at pace. Currently these projects are delivering over 1,000 Special Education Needs pupil places and this will continue to be a strong feature in 2023.

As Special Education Needs provision is integrated as part of the overall school building project, it is not possible to extrapolate SEN specific expenditure.