Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 24 February 2026
499. Deputy Malcolm Byrne asked the Minister for Education and Youth when the Energy and Condition Survey of the school estate will be completed; the actions that will result; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14317/26]
Amharc ar fhreagraIn preparing for the decarbonisation of the school estate my Department needed to establish a national energy profile of the school sector.
A pilot phase of the Schools Energy Inventory project was completed in December 2022 and included 601 schools across five Counties, Kildare, Meath, Offaly, Wexford and Wicklow. This pilot was funded by the European Investment Bank Advisory Hub programme.
Additional funding was subsequently secured in 2024 under the REPowerEU programme to complete this work for all remaining schools. This phase currently has 3,195 surveys completed to date with the balance due to be completed by the end of Q2 2026.
The data development involves energy assessors visiting the schools and gathering focused information on energy use, building types, age, and size along with an overview of general fabric and energy aspects of electrical and mechanical systems energy performance and energy consumption characteristics of each school.
Each school is surveyed by an experienced construction professional who gathers approximately 160 pieces of data, which includes high level building areas, different fabric elements and information about lighting, heating and domestic hot water etc. It also includes questions on building fabric condition.
This data is entered on a tablet computer onsite, it is then imported into the Department’s Geographical Information System (GIS) and processed into a relational database, which performs numerous calculations to determine a School Energy and Carbon Estimated Rating (SEACER).
The rating includes considerations of primary energy and carbon. It includes a comparison with a similar Notional school building for scaling and benchmarking purposes and is based on the Non-Domestic Energy Assessment Procedures and statistical techniques. This high level and strategic approach which is driven via the Department’s Geographic Information System (GIS) enables the database to be kept up to date to reflect future building projects etc.
This is a very cost-effective approach for an energy asset rating system for the Department and has significant advantages in that rather than producing individual standalone ratings and reports, it can collectively capture the range of relevant issues for analysis centrally by the Department.
The innovative approach of bringing energy and condition data together in the one survey database has significant potential to assist with future prioritisation of decarbonisation and investments in the school estate, enabling identification and targeted development of future school sector energy and decarbonisation programmes that will reduce overall reliance on fossil fuels and accelerate the deployment of renewable energy.
In due course, once all survey data has been collected, it will then undergo robust Quality Assurance processes.
Once the survey data has undergone the robust Quality Assurance processes, will analysis in relation to SEACER and Building Condition ratings be able to commence. As such it will likely be early 2027 before complete results will be available to assist with future prioritisation of decarbonisation and investments in the school estate.
