Schools Building Projects
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28
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John McGuinness (FF), Carlow-Kilkenny

There are capacity issues in some of the schools I have mentioned, like Church Hill National School in Cuffesgrange and Scoil Mhuire in Mooncoin. Then there is the issue of Castlecomer's school, which has 634 students. That project is shovel-ready and the school wants to get on with that work. There has been such a long wait for the Kilkenny school campus. Planning permission is there. Some €3.5 million has already been spent on the groundworks and the planning permission will expire. I keep on emphasising that and will continue to because the school needs to know where it is going before the end of July. It cannot be left until next year for the school to be given some sort of indication, because that will force it back into the planning process. The school will also lose time and see site costs increase. The other interesting thing about schools is the renting of prefabs. This has cost Church Hill National School €480,000 to date. As such, there is a really urgent case for investment in all of those schools.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28