Eoin Ó Broin
Question:90. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Education and Youth the reason the tender for a long-awaited school project (details supplied) collapsed prior to works commencing in 2025. [22614/26]
View answerWednesday, 25 March 2026
Questions (90)
Written answers
The large-scale capital project for the school referred to by the Deputy is for the phased construction of a 1000 pupil Post Primary school with additional classrooms for children with Special Educational Needs.
Phase 1 of the project is currently being delivered under my Department's Modular Framework to deliver 9 general classrooms and 2 specialist classrooms.
Phase 1 also includes the repurposing of part of the existing accommodation to include classrooms for children with Special Educational Needs in the interim.
The subsequent phases of the Project to deliver the remaining accommodation is currently under review and my Department will be in contact with the School and Patron body once this has review has been completed.
With respect to the previous tender for Lucan CC, certain issues that arose during the procurement process, and the requirement to carefully manage the capital programme within constrained capital funding caused significant delays in completing the overall procurement process. More than four years had elapsed since the publication of the contract notice and more than two years since the tender submission deadline. Given the passage of time since tenders were returned an unacceptably high risk that the contract may not successfully be delivered within budget had been identified. On that basis, the decision was made to collapse the tender procedure.
As the Deputy will be aware, I have recently published the €7.55 billion NDP Sectoral Investment Plan for the Education and Youth Sectors for the period 2026 to 2030. This NDP Sectoral Plan involves a very strong emphasis on maximising existing capacity and prioritisation of school building projects to meet the most urgent needs. In this regard there will be a strong special education dimension to project rollout.
Of the total €7.55 billion investment it is envisaged that circa. €5 billion will be used for project rollout to support the delivery and modernisation of school buildings across the Large Scale, Additional Accommodation, Modular, and Annual September Accommodation Needs programmes.
My department will continue to build on the progress made over recent years with the continued rollout of these projects on a prioritised basis to meet the most urgent needs in terms of provision of additional capacity and modernisation of existing facilities. In this regard, I have also published a list of the 105 school building projects in the first tranche to proceed to construction or tender over 2026 and 2027. This list includes the modular project at Lucan Community College and there are currently 60 school projects in Dublin under construction.
These projects are in addition to €1824.69 million in capital funding for County Dublin schools between 2020 and 2025. Over that period, a total of 245 schools have been upgraded either through provision of a new school building, a large-scale extension or provision of modular accommodation. There are also currently 60 school projects in County Dublin under construction. Another 10 school projects will go to tender or construction in 2026 and 2027, and this summer, 53 schools are approved to undergo works as part of the Summer Works Scheme / Climate Action scheme.
The 105 prioritised projects will progress to tender and/or construction on a rolling basis over the course of 2026 and 2027 and within the context of NDP funding parameters. The timing of project progression will reflect the need to carefully manage the rollout of these projects to construction on a controlled basis to ensure that projects are delivered efficiently, align with the requirements of the Infrastructure Guidelines and Capital Works Management Framework and remain within the parameters of NDP funding.
Department officials will continue to engage closely patron bodies, management bodies and schools with respect to the timing of the progression of projects to tender and/or construction over the period 2026 to 2027. This will include continued engagement with Lucan Community College with respect to the progression of its project to in construction.
The current status of all projects continues to be set out under item number ten at the following link: www.gov.ie. This is updated on a regular basis to reflect project progress through the various stages of capital appraisal, site acquisition, design, tender and construction.
