Schools Building Projects
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

Since 2020, the Department of education has invested over €6 billion in school projects throughout the country under the national development plan, involving the completion of over 1,300 school building projects. Over €159 million has been invested in schools across County Westmeath and €234 million in schools across County Wicklow in that period.
Project Dargle, the project bundle referred to by the Deputy, comprises seven post-primary schools in Westmeath and Wicklow devolved for delivery to the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA. These school building projects are flagship projects and will provide new, modernised, high-quality, permanent facilities catering for almost 6,000 students. This will transform the education infrastructure for these school communities now and in the decades ahead, enabling students to benefit from purpose-built facilities.
All seven schools are at stage 2b of the architectural design process. This is an important stage which allows for detailed design and planning, obtaining necessary statutory permissions and preparation of tender documents. Stage 2b is being finalised at the moment. The length of time a project takes to go through each stage varies depending on a number of factors, including scale and complexity.
In July, the Government announced a capital allocation of €7.55 billion for the Department of Education and Youth for the period 2026 to 2030 under the national development plan. As part of this 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 the project's roll-out, the approach will be to continue to maximise the capacity of the existing school estate in the first instance and to provide necessary additional capacity through a targeted and prioritised project roll-out over the course of the 2026 to 2030 period to meet the most urgent and prioritised needs.
The Department will continue to provide guidance and practical support as required. The NDFA will engage directly with school authorities to keep them fully informed.

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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/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11