School Accommodation Dail Éireann — 2026-06-17 ============================================================ Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West I thank the Deputy. I appreciate the question and thank him for his ongoing engagement on matters of education, not just in the House but also his own engagement in it. It is important that we do so. I want to go to the school the Deputy raised. I assure the Deputy that the Government is fully committed to supporting students with special educational needs to fulfil their full potential. The programme for Government makes a number of commitments to deliver on this important objective. I can assure the Deputy that the Department has been working closely with the school authorities in relation to the school's accommodation requirement and will continue to do so. The Department of education appointed a project manager who visited the school to examine the feasibility of providing two special educational needs modular classrooms at the school's preferred location on the school site. The Department was advised that due to a site-specific technical constraint only one unit could be accommodated at the school's preferred location. However, I commend the school's strong preference for proceeding with two special educational needs classrooms, and the project manager is now undertaking a revised viability assessment report, including examining the possibility of relocating the modular accommodation to an alternative location on the school site. The Department of education will endeavour to assist in facilitating this option. Once the process has been completed, officials from the Department of education will be in contact with the school authorities. The Deputy will appreciate that the Department is required to utilise the funding available to it to ensure that every child has access to a school place, and indeed there is a large demand for school places and class provision in the Balbriggan school planning area. I assure the Deputy that the Department is fully committed to the optimum special education needs accommodation solution at the school and will continue to engage with the school in this regard. It is important to note the project manager has been appointed and has gone out there. I could not but strongly commend the school authorities for wanting to go ahead with the two special classes. That is not universal but perhaps the Deputy might convey to the school authorities that we do appreciate that they are looking to the future as well. One of the things we have to bear in mind as a Department and a Government is the large demand for special education class provision in the Balbriggan school planning area. That is one thing we have to be very cognisant of as we move forward. I will give a commitment that we will work very closely with the school authorities to ensure we find the best possible solution there and to ensure engagement with the school authorities on it. By way of information, the Deputy will be aware that the NCSE is the statutory body for the provision of special education and allocating supports for children with additional needs. The Department is guided by the NCSE in relation to requirements for special classes in the first instance. In order to respond to the urgent need for special educational needs class provision identified by the NCSE, my Department is progressing urgent building projects that involve providing modular accommodation for SEN class provision. This delivery method and modern methods of construction offer an extremely high-quality carbon-friendly building combined with fast delivery. In overall terms, it is important to have a range of delivery mechanisms for delivering school accommodation to support the very strong and ambitious roll-out of school building projects across the country. I assure the Deputy that the Department will be working very closely with the project manager and the school authorities in order to progress the delivery of special education class accommodation as quickly as possible. My officials will engage directly with the school again on the next steps for delivery of this accommodation. --- 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/2026-06-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-17