172. Deputy Leo Varadkar asked the Minister for Education if she will authorise payments to a school (details supplied). [37499/24]

The school referred to was approved to enter the Department’s pipeline of school buildings for a project to provide 6 mainstream classrooms and 5 SET rooms plus 1 admin/office. The project has been devolved to the school authority for delivery and is currently approved to Stage 4 - Construction stage.

I can confirm that all design team fees received in my Department up to Stage 2b of the process have been issued to the school authority.

A request for the drawdown of the next instalment of design team fees has been submitted to my Department in recent weeks. I am pleased to advise that the assessment of these fees has been completed and administered and should be with the school authority shortly.