Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The school building project for the school referred to by the Deputy is being delivered under my Department's school building programme and will provide a 16 classroom primary school and accommodation, including two classrooms for children with special educational needs.

My Department progressed 8 Design and Build (D and B) projects (Lots 1 and 2) to construction in 2021, with a further 10 projects (Lots 3, 4 and 5) progressed to construction in Summer 2022. A further 10 projects (Lot 6) progressed to tender stage in April 2023.

All of these projects are tendered to my Department’s current D&B Contractors Framework. It will be 2024 before the next scheduled bundle of projects can be tendered to that framework and into late 2024 before further projects could proceed to tender.

In order to have projects delivered at the earliest possible opportunity, my Department is of the view that the intervening period can be utilised to bring a number of projects with planning permission, including the project for the school referred to by the Deputy, to the level of employer-led design with a Design Team assigned to do so under the supervision of my Department’s project manager. This will ensure that such projects do not have to await capacity on the current framework to proceed to tender but rather can be progressed and actioned over that timeframe to tender outside of the D&B framework.

It is envisaged that this will also serve to broaden the range and number of Contractors to which such projects can be tendered than would hitherto have been possible within the Design and Build Framework. This forms part of my Department’s ongoing strategic approach to seek to widen the pool of Contractors tendering for school building projects.

The process of appointing the Design Team from my Department’s Frameworks of Consultants was completed in September 2023 and the project is now progressing through design development stages. It is anticipated that the project will proceed to tender later this year.

My Department will continue to liaise with the school’s patron body in relation to the school’s interim accommodation needs pending delivery of the permanent accommodation for the school and will provide further updates as the project progresses.