School Facilities
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Frankie Feighan (FG), Sligo-Leitrim

I will bring the Deputy's concerns back to the Minister and ask her, if she is in Donegal, to put in a tour of St. Eunan's College. Since 2020, the Department has invested over €6 billion in schools throughout the country under the national development plan, involving the completion of 1,300 school building projects. In addition, repurposing and optimising existing accommodation capacity across the school estate has been a key enabler of timely local provision of special class capacity in a way that supports best practice in inclusion and integration. Some 80% of new special classes in 2025 and 2026 are being facilitated by repurposed classroom accommodation. The Government's support for this investment, including by way of supplementary capital funding, has delivered real benefits for school communities. Supplementary capital funding of €210 million, approved by the Government, helped to bring the total capital allocation of the Department in 2025 to €1.6 billion.
Government Departments are currently in the process of publishing their sectoral national development implementation plans. The sectoral plan for the education and youth sector will be published next week and the first tranche of projects to progress to construction will be published in January. The NDP implementation plan will optimise input 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 sufficient and ensuring delivery that is affordable, offers value for money and meets functional needs. I thank the Deputy again for raising this important issue.

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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