Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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369. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the steps her Department will take to fast-track the approval of funding for an outside modular unit to provide an additional special class at a school (details supplied). [28856/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The purpose of the Additional School Accommodation (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 and retained by the school, or a new SEN class has been sanctioned by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE).

The Deputy will be aware that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has responsibility for coordinating and advising on the education provision for children with special educational needs nationwide. The department and the NCSE have worked closely on a more streamlined and joined up planning process which has ensured a targeted approach to meet demand for special education placements ahead of each new school year. The Department continues to work with the NCSE in relation to the short-term requirements for special class and special school places and the more strategic and longer-term requirements.

Since 2020, my department has invested over €5.9 billion in our 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.

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 Programme for Government recognises the importance of strong capital investment in the school building programme and supporting this with enhanced allocations through the NDP process.

The department has a significant modular accommodation programme in place to assist schools in the provision of additional capacity, including in respect of facilitating the establishment of special classes. This programme involves the use of Project Management supports which is designed to enable the accommodation to be provided as quickly as possible and help ease the administrative workload for school authorities in relation to the management and delivery of projects.

I can confirm that a Project Manager has been appointed from the department’s framework for the school in question and a comprehensive viability report of the school site has been completed. This report is being considered by my officials and a decision will issue to the school authorities directly, upon completion of the assessment process.