School Facilities
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26
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Alan Dillon (FG), Mayo

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter and giving me the opportunity on behalf of the Minister for Education and Youth, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, to update the House on the current position regarding Cloontagh National School in County Longford. Cloontagh National School is a two-teacher school based in Killashee parish. The school is under the patronage of Bishop Paul Connell and a Catholic ethos is upheld. School enrolment has decreased from 23 in 2021 to 2022, to 14 in 2025 to 2026, reflecting the national decline in primary demographics. At a national level, primary enrolments are projected to decline by 100,000 over a ten-year period. In 2022, on foot of an application, accommodation was approved for this school under the additional school accommodation scheme. This project will provide one mainstream classroom, one special education needs classroom and ancillary. A stage 2 report was submitted to the Department officials in quarter 3 of 2025. This report is currently under review from both a technical and cost perspective. All projects, including this one, will undergo the necessary due diligence outlined in the infrastructure guidelines. Given the detailed nature of the evaluation process, the need to ensure full cost compliance, and the requirement to align the project with the prioritisation framework under the national development plan, this review process is necessarily thorough.
In July 2025, the Government announced an allocation of over €7.55 billion for the Department of Education and Youth for a period up to 2030 under the national development plan. As part of the 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. Regarding 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 also provide the necessary additional capacity through targeted and prioritised project roll-out over the course of the 2026 to 2030 period to meet the most urgent and prioritised needs.
The sectoral plan for the education and youth sector will be published shortly. The first tranche of projects to progress to construction will be published at that time.
This national development plan, NDP, implementation plan will optimise ongoing outputs 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 insufficient and ensuring delivery that is affordable, offers value for money and meets functional needs. All existing school building projects and applications for accommodation will be considered in this context, with a particular focus on ensuring existing capacity is maximised.
The Department had recent engagement with the school and will continue to work with it to ensure current and future school place needs are prioritised.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-26