Written answers
Tuesday, 8 July 2025
Department of Education and Skills
Schools Building Projects
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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377. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the details of each capital project funded by her Department in each year since 2020, by county, including name of school, nature of the project, square metre, final costs excluding land acquisition, final cost including land acquisition and cost per square metre, in tabular form. [37079/25]
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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378. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the measures in place to ensure value for money on capital projects funded by her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37080/25]
Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 377 and 378 together.
Since 2020, the Department of Education and Youth has invested over €6 billion in our schools throughout the country under the National Development Plan. This investment has resulted in approximately 1,400 completed school building projects, including large-scale projects, additional accommodation, and modular buildings. In addition construction is currently underway in over 320 other projects, which includes new school buildings some of which are being delivered in phases. My department also completed more than 3,000 smaller-scale school building improvements through emergency works and summer works schemes during this timeframe.
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 . Government support for this investment, including by way of supplementary capital funding, has delivered real benefits for school communities. A recent Government decision has approved €210m supplementary capital funding for my department which brings the total capital allocation for 2025 for my department to €1.6bn.
My department has a robust approach to cost control and ensuring value for money, including:
- Optimising use of existing capacity wherever possible, including reutilisation of modular accommodation when used for interim purposes
- Cost and floor area norms for schools
- An extensive suite of technical guidance documents which help control the scope of individual school projects
- Project management supports across various delivery mechanisms including the ETB sector and various other delivery partners.
- A range of procurement frameworks which support the delivery of the school building programme as part of overall procurement strategy.
The wide ranging nature of projects being delivered under my department’s capital programme also assists with maximising all aspects of market capacity. School building projects that add capacity can range from 1 classroom extension at a primary school to a very large new school project such as for a new 1,000 student post-primary school. Other types of projects include projects to repurpose existing accommodation, typically for facilitating the establishment of new special classes and also projects to address maintenance and condition issues in schools, such as under the Emergency Works Scheme, Summer Works Scheme etc. Most of these projects are managed and delivered on a devolved basis by individual school authorities so the more detailed type of information sought by the Deputy is primarily dealt with at local level.
Notwithstanding this, the status of all projects is set out at www.gov.ie/en/department-of-education/services/major-projects/. This is updated on a regular basis to reflect project progress through the various stages of capital appraisal, site acquisition, design, tender and construction.
With in excess of 4,400 projects completed since 2020, the dataset is very substantial. If the Deputy would like more specific information on an individual project/s my department can link in with the relevant school authorities for full details on same.
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