Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department has recently received 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.

Once the application has been assessed by Officials from my Department, the application will be progressed and the decision will issue to the school authority directly.