The Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O’Sullivan, T.D., today announced that the Inspired Spaces Consortium has been selected as the preferred tenderer for the provision of the five new schools that have been included in Bundle 5 of the Department's Public Private Partnership (“PPP”) programme.

The Minister stated: "It is my pleasure to announce that, subject to the conclusion of the remaining stages in the procurement process, it is anticipated that construction of these five schools will commence in Summer 2016. It is expected that construction will be completed and that the new school buildings will be available for occupation in the second half of 2017. The importance of these new schools to the communities within which they are located cannot be underestimated. In addition to offering greatly enhanced state of the art educational facilities to students and staff, this project will provide over 4,800 new school places on four new campuses. The staff and students in all five schools can look forward to using the most up-to-date designs and facilities that will be maintained by Inspired Spaces to the highest standards”, said Minister O’Sullivan.

The Minister went on to say “I would like to express my appreciation to the management and principals of each of the schools for their co-operation with the process and to the continuing commitment of my staff. I would like to pay special tribute to the work of the National Development Finance Agency (NDFA), part of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which is responsible for the procurement and delivery of the schools. I would also like to thank all the other stakeholders who have contributed to bringing the project to this stage.”

Under the PPP model, the schools will be designed, built, financed and maintained for twenty-five years by the Inspired Spaces Consortium. The day to day caretaking, maintenance and cleaning of the school will be managed by Inspired Spaces leaving the management and staff of the school with more time to concentrate on their core educational activities.

The Schools Bundle 5 PPP programme will consist of five schools on four sites in counties Carlow, Wexford, Wicklow and Meath.The schools included in the Bundle 5 are: