School Accommodation
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-03
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Keira Keogh (FG), Mayo

The Minister of State should absolutely send my list to the Department, but he can be guaranteed that it already has my list. I thank him for the details he outlined.
In his reply, he said that details of all live and completed projects are available on the website, but my big issue is that a school might be at stage 2a for 18 months. One school said it had no contact since April last year, another has had no contact in ten months, another said it was nine months and another said six months. St. Brid's Special School is in the ADAPT 3 fast track programme and some of the phrases that the principal has used to describe the process so far include "deep concern", "growing frustration" and "prolonged uncertainty".
My big ask is that we get clear communication between the Department and schools. It is not unreasonable for a school to have a check-in once every six weeks or two months - even three months would be acceptable to some schools. I do not understand why a school that is at stage 1 thought it might be included in a funding tranche when, in fact, you need to be at stage 2b. If principals who have been there for a very long period of time are not aware of the process then there definitely is a communication breakdown somewhere. I would like to see explanations for what exactly happens in stage 1, stage 2a and stage 2b, and what the timelines to be expected are. If a school is currently at stage 2a - which many schools in Mayo are - I want, as their public representative, to get them to stage 2b before the next tranche of funding is announced so we are in with a chance of many of them getting funded and getting that moment of turning the sod.
The bottom line is that every child in the State, including those in County Mayo, deserves the same opportunities, facilities and investment, and the access should not be different from one school to the next. I acknowledge that there has been a lot of funding into Mayo over recent years. It is unfortunate that in this case we were not included in the tranche, but I am hopeful that we will have a lot of schools at stage 2b at the next one.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-03