School Facilities
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
============================================================

Frankie Feighan (FG), Sligo-Leitrim

I thank Deputy Mac Lochlainn for raising this matter. It gives me an opportunity, on behalf of the Minister for Education and Youth, Deputy Naughton, to outline to the Dáil the current position in relation to the school project for St. Eunan’s College in Letterkenny. This project is included in the Department of Education and Youth’s construction programme, which will be delivered under the national development plan as part of the Project Ireland 2040 framework. St. Eunan’s College is a single-sex, Catholic secondary school for boys under the patronage of the Bishop of Raphoe. This school building project will deliver a new extension and refurbishment of some existing accommodation to provide accommodation for 1,000 pupils and additional classrooms for children with special educational needs.
The stage 1 submission of this major project was initially received in May 2020 and, following the submission of an addendum report, it was approved to the next stage in September 2020. Following this, stage 2A of the project was approved in April 2021. An emergency works application for the installation of fire alarms and related works was completed in April 2022.
Following a review of the schedule of accommodation, the design team was requested to submit design options to include an increase of two classrooms for children with special educational needs. The design team submitted its amended design options to include the increased accommodation to the Department for review, which was approved in July 2024. Planning permission was secured in March 2022. Thereafter, a complete stage 2 report was received by the Department in October 2024 for review. Stage 2B involves detailed design, securing all statutory approvals and the preparation of tender documentation.
In February 2024, the Department secured decant accommodation in the vacant boys’ national school, which is adjacent to the school site. This will facilitate the decant of the school to allow completion of the major project. However, these premises will be subject to enabling works in anticipation of the major project progressing to construction. The next stage in the process will be stage 3, tender action and award. The Department is in continuous contact with the design team and the school regarding further progression of the project.
In July, the Government announced a capital allocation of €7.55 billion for the Department of Education and Youth for the 2026-2030 period under the national development plan. As part of this NDP allocation, the Department will place a strong emphasis on provision for children with special educational needs, with a particular focus on meeting annual school place needs.
With regard to the project roll-out 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 roll-out over the course of the 2026-2030 period to meet the most urgent and prioritised needs.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09