Sinn Féin TD for Wicklow and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), John Brady, has hit out at the Government’s continued reliance on temporary school accommodation after figures provided to the committee revealed that approximately €1.3 billion was spent on temporary accommodation between 2021 and 2025, while long-promised permanent school building projects remain stalled and deprioritised under the revised National Development Plan.
The correspondence provided to the committee by the Department of Education shows that €222 million has been spent on rented land and accommodation for schools over the past five years, while €1.14 billion was spent on the Department’s modular accommodation programme between 2021 and 2025.
The Wicklow TD highlighted several schools that have secured planning permission but remain stuck at Stage 2b of the Department’s building process, meaning they have not progressed to tender or construction and are not included on the current list of priority projects.
Teachta Brady said:
“The revelation that €1.3 billion was spent on temporary accommodation between 2021 and 2025 is just the latest demonstration of the Government’s flawed approach in this area.
“This is an astonishing sum of public money being spent on sticking plaster solutions while badly needed permanent school building projects continue to be delayed.
“Successive governments have allowed critical projects to drift for years without accountability, while at the same time pouring billions into temporary measures that do nothing to address the long term infrastructure needs of our school communities.
“To give just a few examples.
“Newtownmountkennedy Primary School initially got planning permission back in 2018, which was then revised in 2023, but it is still at Stage 2b and is not on the department’s list of prioritisation.
“St. Kevin’s National School in Dunlavin is another example of a project that has been long talked about and is badly needed in the area. It was highly publicised, with many claims made about how quickly it would be progressed, but again, it is stuck in a cumbersome process at Stage 2b and is not on the prioritisation list.
“Loreto Secondary School in Bray is another badly needed project that would increase capacity to approximately 1,000 pupils. This school has been relying on prefabs for over 20 years and despite repeated political promises – particularly from Tánaiste Simon Harris who stated in 2021 that the design and planning process would be exhausted and who again indicated in 2024 that the project would move to tender that year – it remains stuck at Stage 2b and is not on the priority list.
“All of these schools have completed the planning process and were given cast-iron political assurances that they would quickly move to tender and construction.
“These were promises made to school communities, students, teachers and parents – that have now been broken.
“While Government was breaking these promises, it was simultaneously spending hundreds of millions on temporary accommodation instead of delivering the permanent school buildings those communities were promised.
“It is unthinkable that projects which have already spent years in the system are now looking at completion dates stretching towards the end of the decade.
“Communities that were promised modern school buildings are instead being told to make do with prefabs and temporary accommodation.
“Our school communities deserve far better.”
ENDS