Schools Building Projects
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-04
============================================================

Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank Deputy O'Donoghue for the question. I will update the Deputy and the House on the current situation regarding the building project for St. Joseph's Secondary School and Gaelscoil Ros Eo in Rush, County Dublin.
The delivery of this campus project has been devolved to Catholic Education, an Irish Schools Trust, CEIST. The brief for St. Joseph’s Secondary School includes the provision of a 1,000-pupil post-primary school, including a four-classroom special education base. The brief for Gaelscoil Ros Eo includes the delivery of a 16-classroom primary school with one special education base.
The project is currently at stage 2b of the architectural design process. This stage allows for detailed design and planning, obtaining the necessary statutory permissions, and the preparation of tender documents. Planning has been granted, and CEIST has advised that the stage 2b report is currently ongoing. Once the stage 2b report has been received by the Department, it will undergo a detailed technical and cost review in line with public spending code. Managing timing, scope and cost is crucial to staying within budgetary limits for the overall programme.
The Department recently published the €7.55 billion national development plan sectoral investment plan for the education and youth sectors for the period 2026 to 2030. This plan involves a very strong emphasis on maximising existing capacity and prioritisation of school building projects to meet the most urgent needs. There will be a strong special education dimension to projects being roll out. Of the €7.55 billion investment, it is envisaged that circa €5 billion will be used for projects to roll out the support, delivery and modernisation of school buildings across the large-scale, additional accommodation, modular, and annual September accommodation needs programmes. Over the course of 2026 and 2027, there will be construction work at some 10% of the school estate nationwide. These projects will, when completed, provide an extra 57,000 additional and modernised school places with a strong focus on special education in all of the projects. It is important to acknowledge and understand that, going forward, we are going to put fierce emphasis in all projects, both at primary and post-primary levels, that they encompass special education as well. The Department will continue to build on the progress made over recent years and will continue to roll out projects on a prioritisation basis to meet the urgent needs in the provision of additional capacity and modernisation of existing buildings.
In this regard, the Department has also published a list of 105 school building projects in the first tranche to proceed to construction or tender over the coming years. I recognise schools with important building projects are not included in the first tranche of prioritised projects. As part of planning ahead for the next tranche of projects to progress to tender, the Department-led prioritisation process will continue over the coming years to assess and evaluate the progress of individual projects through the design pipeline having regard to the continuing need to maximise existing capacity and determine the prioritised need going forward. This process will involve engagement with key stakeholders and individual schools. The accommodation needs at St Joseph's Secondary School and Gaelscoil Ros Eo will be considered as part of the ongoing overall Department-led prioritisation process in consultation with the school authorities and patron into the future. I assure the Deputy we are well aware of the challenges there and of the growing need within the community as it expands.

---

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/2026-02-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:35+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-04