This year's school building programme of €388 million will deliver in excess of 260 significant school building projects at primary and post-primary level. In excess of 200 of these will commence on site in the current year. The remaining projects had commenced in previous years and are currently nearing completion.
Apart from the projects included in this year's school building programme, my Department has on hand approximately 950 applications for significant capital investment in the primary and post-primary schools concerned. This figure comprises applications that were assessed over the past two to three years and where an accommodation deficit has been established. It also includes cases that have yet to be assessed by my Department.
The Deputy will be aware that I have been concentrating my capital funding on moving to tender and construction those projects already admitted to architectural planning rather than incur new design costs on others. The significant increase in funding secured this year has enabled significant progress to be made and the challenge is to maintain that progress in the coming years and to progress more projects through architectural planning and on to tender and construction.
I previously announced my intention to publish later this year, for the first time ever, a multiannual programme of works. To that end, the planning and building unit of my Department is currently assessing all remaining projects against the published prioritisation criteria to ensure that the multiannual programme response, when published, is well structured from the outset.
My aim since taking office has been to give as much information as possible to schools about their status within the building programme. The multiannual programme, when published, will make a further key contribution to that end. Following case by case assessment, it will indicate the status under the prioritisation criteria of all projects. In that way, and having regard to the multiannual funding envelope, my plan is to give indicative timescales for commencement of initial planning, detailed design work or movement to tender and construction as appropriate for particular projects or project bundles.