Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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295. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her Department requires a minimal life expectancy for any modular building provided for schools; the nature of that requirement; and the average life expectancy of school modular buildings. [68953/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Modular accommodation is a feature of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) which describes a range of manufacturing and innovative alternatives to traditional construction. There are many benefits of adopting MMC in the school sector ranging from faster delivery of construction projects to minimising disruption in live school environments. My Department has recently established a new Modular Framework of suppliers with new design guidance which provides high quality school accommodation and increased sustainability to improve the energy performance of school accommodation, resulting in improved comfort, lower energy bills and reduced carbon emissions. Framework suppliers use factory controlled precision through digitalisation and strict quality control processes to create consistent quality construction.

This new modular framework with new design guidance requires the building system to have a design life of 60 years. The factory precision of MMC contributes to the ability of this form of construction to deliver consistently robust buildings which are easy to manage and maintain, providing high quality learning spaces for the students of today and the future.