School Accommodation
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
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Hildegarde Naughton (FG), Galway West

I thank the Deputy again for raising this issue with me. Deputy Paula Butterly had also raised the issue of this school. I will ask the Department about those previous applications. As I said, we have to look at the existing capacity within schools across the country when we are looking at providing spaces. The priority is for special educational places across the country. We are committed to ensuring that there is appropriate accommodation available for all pupils in the wider context and to ensure that each school project on the schools building programme is subject to due diligence required under the Government's infrastructure guidelines.
It is a challenging construction environment we are working in right across the education, transport and housing sectors so the Department also has to manage the timing, scope and cost of individual projects to ensure they remain within budgetary parameters for the overall programme. That involves constant reviewing throughout a project's life cycle. As I said, as part of the NDP implementation project roll-out for large-scale projects and additional school accommodation scheme projects, the approach will be on a tightly prioritised basis to maximise the capacity of the existing school estate and to provide additional capacity through that targeted and prioritised project roll-out over the course of 2026 to 2030. I will follow up, maybe with the Department as well, in relation to those specific issues.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13