Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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55. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the status of capital investments in the school estate. [44935/24]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Since 2020, my department has invested over €5 billion in our schools throughout the country, involving the completion of over 950 school building projects and with construction currently underway at approximately 350 other projects, which includes 37 new school buildings. These 350 projects currently at construction involve a total State investment of over €1.5bn.

The department announced earlier this year that close to 90 projects, including 28 new school buildings, would be authorised to proceed from tender stage to construction over the course of 2024 and early 2025. In total, around €800 million will be invested in these projects under the department’s Large Scale Capital Programme and Additional Accommodation Scheme for essential classroom accommodation.

Between projects currently under construction and projects moving to construction in this latest phase, investments by the Department of Education are adding over 550,000 square metres of new and modernised capacity to our school estate.

Since 2020 c .€400m invested in smaller scale school building improvements delivering over 2,900 projects across the SWS & EWS schemes, of which circa 700 of these projects were completed over the course of 2023.

This is a record level of investment in school buildings. It will expand the number of school places, significantly increase provision for special education and upgrade and modernise our school infrastructure. The impact of this will be felt in communities, right around the country.

The key drivers of capital investment in the schools sector include:

• demographic growth, particularly at post primary level

• increased demand for special educational needs provision

• alignment of school place provision with new housing development

• climate action objectives including deep energy retrofit.