Holly Cairns (Cork South-West, Social Democrats)
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981. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to provide a list of all properties her Department has rented from 2015 to date in 2025, including the length of tenancy; and the amount spent on rent on each property over this time period. [20342/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that temporary accommodation in schools may be rented or purchased and funded by the Department or by the school authority itself, with or without Department sanction.

As the Deputy will appreciate, my Department's priority is to ensure that every child has access to a physical school place. In this regard, it is sometimes necessary to make use of temporary accommodation in order to meet the accommodation needs of schools.

The timing and duration of the accommodation need is also considered in determining the optimum accommodation solution – a short-term accommodation requirement does not require a long-term accommodation solution. For example, a school may require a temporary building in circumstances where a major school construction project is planned. Such temporary accommodation is vacated when the major project concerned is completed. The length of time it is necessary to make use of temporary rented accommodation will vary from project to project.

The changing landscape in relation to enrolments including that of arriving Ukrainian children means that accommodation requirements can vary locally and regionally and between short, medium and long-term and this is a relevant factor considered by the Department in determining the type of accommodation solution to be put in place.

Since 2020, over €5.9 billion has been invested in schools throughout the country, involving the completion of over 1,350 school building projects. Between projects currently under construction and projects moving to construction in the coming months, investments by the Department of Education are adding over 610,000 square metres of new and modernised capacity to our school estate. The progression and completion of these projects is and will make further inroads on the replacement of rented sites and buildings with knock-on savings on the rental budget. Good progress continues to be made with the roll-out of projects, and the current status of projects being delivered is listed in tabular format, on a county by county basis, on the Department’s website at www.gov.ie and is updated regularly.

The majority of schools based in rented buildings are already part of the pipeline of projects under the school building programme.

The attached table lists schools in rented buildings, the year the rental commenced, and the year it ended, where relevant. For reasons of commercial sensitivity the rental amount can not be released.

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