Schools Building Projects
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
============================================================

Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare

I thank the Senator for raising this matter as it provides me with an opportunity on behalf of the Minister for Education and Youth to outline to the Seanad the current position in relation to the major funding project for Newtown School. The project involves the redevelopment of Newtown School to provide accommodation for a long term enrolment of 600 students. The existing shared campus will be reorganised and extended to complement the historic architecture that the Senator identified. The project involves a significant expansion to the existing school building to include a new PE hall facility and the special education needs suite. An enabling work contract to provide additional accommodation was completed in February 2025. The major building project for the school referred to by the Senator is currently at an advanced stage of architectural planning, namely, stage 2B detailed design, where the design team has secured all statutory approvals and is preparing the suite of tender documents. It is an important phase of the process.
This building is of significant conservation importance as highlighted by the planning authority. The design team outlined the proposal of works that need to be completed to improve the condition of the deteriorating buildings, thereby allowing the council to grant an extension to the planning of five years. A planning extension was secured and enabling works were approved for the link building roof in September 2025. The design team prepared and submitted to the Department for review the tender documents to appoint a contractor to carry out these works. These tender documents were recently approved by the Department and the design team was instructed to proceed in issuing the letter of intent to the successful contractor. This letter of intent issued in April this year. Once works commence on the site it is envisaged it will take four to five months to complete. A total capital allocation of €7.55 billion for the Department of Education and Youth has been confirmed for the period from 2026 to 2030 under the national development plan. As part of this 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.
In relation to 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 provide 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. Prioritisation will continue to identify further tranches of projects to proceed to tender and construction over the NDP period with stakeholder consultation to commence in June 2026.
Since 2020, the Department of education has provided €149.65 million in capital funding for Waterford schools. Over this period, a total of 33 schools have been upgraded either through provision of a new school building, a large-scale extension or provision of modular accommodation. Two school projects were included in the NDP implementation plan to go to tender or construction in 2026 and 2027. There are currently six school projects in Waterford under construction. This summer, seven schools are approved to undergo works as part of the climate action summer works scheme. In addition, since 2020 a total of 68 special classes have been sanctioned in Waterford, of which 17 were sanctioned for September 2026.

---

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/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10