Schools Building Projects Dail Éireann — 2026-04-22 ============================================================ Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta. If memory serves, in a previous incarnation in a previous life, he raised this issue at an education committee. That is going back some time. I thank him for raising and outlining the issue in relation to Lucan Community College. The Department of Education and Youth is progressing the delivery of a large timber frame modular extension to Lucan Community College. The project will deliver nine additional classrooms, a science laboratory and preparation area and a design and technical graphics room. Construction has already commenced on site. This delivery method and model of construction offers an extremely high quality, carbon-friendly building, combined with fast delivery. The Department officials are engaging with the school patron, the Dublin-Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board, and the school authorities in relation to progressing this accommodation. They remain available to provide support on this project, including the scope for repurposing some of the existing classrooms for special education provision. The National Council for Special Education is engaging with the school authorities in this regard and, of course, the Department has a repurposing scheme which provides €30,000 for start-up grants for each new special class and up to €70,000 for repurposing existing accommodation for special classes. The Deputy will be aware we recently published €7.55 billion in sectoral investment for education across the education system, and a lot of that is due to a strong emphasis on maximising existing capacity and prioritising school building projects which meet the most urgent need. In this regard, there will be a strong special education dimension to projects being rolled out. The Deputy mentioned the families in the school. There is a project being moved ahead, which I outlined in earlier comments. We, in the Department, will continue to work with the school authorities and the patron body, Dublin-Dún Laoghaire ETB, to ensure needs are met within the Lucan area. We see a huge amount of investment going into school building projects across the country. Over the past five or six years, extraordinary funding has been spent on them. However, when it comes to individual schools - as I indicated, this project has been discussed for a long time, going back a number of years to when the Deputy first mentioned it at meetings - it is important we continue to liaise. This first phase of it is on-site. This allows us to get very good high-spec projects built, and to get them delivered in faster time. We have seen many challenges in relation to projects going on too long. I will endeavour to liaise with Department officials in the planning and building unit to ensure the entire need of the school community, not just this building project but the entire need, is met. I thank the school authorities for their engagement with the National Council for Special Education and the Department in relation to provision of special education, which is a huge core in any building projects we are doing, that is, to ensure we have a provision for special education. I will endeavour to ensure the Department and Lucan Community College continue to liaise so that the needs of the school community and the community at large are met in any new developments. --- 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/2026-04-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-22