Capital projects in education
The National Development Plan’s capital plan for education amounts to €11.9 billion between 2018 and 2027. Currently, there are 352 active large-scale projects being delivered under the school building programme.
Of that €11.9 billion, €8.8 billion is for the schools sector, which includes €420 million for the Digital Strategy for Schools, and €2.2 billion is for the higher education infrastructure. The key drivers for capital investment in the schools sector, as outlined in a Minister’s briefing, are: a “bulge” in enrolments at post-primary level; the number of teachers increasing by 11,576 over the last eight years; the “ramping up” of housing provision placing more demand on schools; costs of sites for new schools in urban centres; and the need to catch up after decades of underinvestment.
Under the Department of Education’s school building programme, there are 373 large-scale projects in the pipeline, with a further 800 projects due for delivery under the Department’s Additional Accommodation Scheme. As of the Department’s latest update, 352 large-scale projects are in progress in some form or another, ranging from pre-Stage 1, preliminary design, to “on site”. The update, published on 31 October 2020, says that 35 of these projects are currently on site. 14 schools are due to open in 2021, with a further two to open in 2022. One school, a post-primary in Clonskeagh, Dublin 6W, is scheduled to open in 2020.
Twenty-seven schools have been opened in temporary start-up accommodation, with the progress of their permanent sites typically marked as being in the site acquisition or design processes. Thirty-one of the projects are shaded green within the report, meaning that their status had seen some progress in the three months prior to the publication of the report. Of those 31, 11 are in County Dublin, with 18 in the Greater Dublin Region.
Further information released by the Department shows that 463 projects have been completed between 2010 and the present day, with 45 of those coming in 2019 and two in 2020. The Minister’s briefing states that “while good progress continues to be made with the rollout of projects, the enhanced funding levels envisaged under the National Development Plan period 2018 to 2027 will be key to ensuring the successful delivery of the remaining elements of the pipeline of projects during the NDP period”.
€1.2 billion has been invested in capital infrastructure under the school building programme since 2018, with €620 million allocated for investment in 2020, but how Covid-19 work stoppages have affected that investment remains to be seen. The briefing also notes that there were around 200 projects on site in March 2020 when all sites were ordered to be closed under Covid-19 restrictions, and “contact has been made to all contractors by the design team and contracts have to recommence work” since the reopening of sites in May 2020.
On the impact of the pandemic on the schools building programme, the briefing states that “it will take time to re-mobilise and see the impact” and that it “is too early to quantify exactly the impacts on projects”. “A clearer picture will emerge over the next few months as projects become fully re-mobilised and we gain an increased understanding of the operational impacts of implementing public health guidelines, in particular in relation to the social distancing rules,” it says.
