James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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453. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the position on the proposal by school principals to her Department to slightly alter the location of modular units to maximise the playground space available to all children at schools (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [47725/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I can confirm to the Deputy, that my Department is in receipt of an application for the Additional School Accommodation (ASA) scheme, from the two schools in question to provide both mainstream and Special Educational Needs classrooms.

The purpose of the ASA scheme is to ensure that essential mainstream classroom and accommodation for students with special educational needs is available to cater for pupils enrolled each year, where the need cannot be met by the school’s existing accommodation or at other schools in the area.

The main focus of resources over the last decade and for the coming period is on provision of additional capacity to cater for increasing demographics. As a result, the current priority under the Additional Accommodation scheme is the provision of essential classroom accommodation to meet demographic demand or where an additional post is being appointed.

At primary level, this situation generally arises to cater for a school’s accommodation requirements where an additional teaching post has been sanctioned by the Teacher Allocation Section, or the requirement for a new class for pupils with special education needs has been identified by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), and all available alternative accommodation within the school is already being used for classroom purposes.

My 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.

The use of my Department’s Modular Accommodation Framework also assists in ensuring lead-in periods for procurement of modular accommodation are minimised to the greatest extent possible. To date, this has worked very well in the education sector and has seen delivery of large scale, high quality modular accommodation to meet the needs of children, particularly those with special educational needs.

I can advise that the Board of Managements of both schools have agreed to and returned the Viability Reports, and the projects will now proceed to delivery.