Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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47. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when Phase 2 of the building works at a school (details supplied) is scheduled to commence; if she will provide an update on the timeline for its completion; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [58779/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The school referred to by the Deputy was provided with a new school building on a greenfield site in January 2024 to cater for 4 mainstream classes, a Special Education Needs class and ancillary accommodation. The new school building is a sustainable timber modular construction and the project was delivered under the Department’s Project Manager framework. This programme provides project management supports to enable accommodation to be provided as quickly as possible and helps to ease the administrative workload for individual schools in relation to the management and delivery of devolved projects.

Since 2020, my department has invested over €6 billion in our schools throughout the country under the National Development Plan, involving the completion of over 1,300 school building projects. Government support for this investment, including by way of supplementary capital funding, has delivered real benefits for school communities.

In July, the Government announced a capital allocation of €7.55 billion for the Department of Education and Youth for the period 2026-2030 under the National Development Plan. As part of this NDP allocation my department will place a strong emphasis on provision for children with special educational needs, with a particular focus on meeting annual school place needs. In relation to project rollout for Large-Scale projects and Additional School Accommodation scheme projects, the approach will be to continue to maximise the capacity of the existing school estate as much as possible in the first instance and provide necessary additional capacity through targeted and prioritised project rollout over the course of 2026 to 2030 period to meet the most urgent and prioritised needs.

All Government departments are expected to publish their sectoral NDP Implementation Plans in November. My department’s plan will optimise outputs from the NDP allocations, with a strong focus on maximising existing school capacity, progressing priority projects where local capacity across schools in the area is insufficient, and ensuring delivery that is affordable, offers value for money, and meets functional needs.

The school referred to by the Deputy currently has staffing of 2 mainstream classes, a special education needs class and a special education teacher post so there is therefore significant accommodation capacity available to the school at present. My department will continue to monitor the development of enrolments at the school in question in relation to the requirement for further accommodation and within the context of NDP Implementation priorities.