Contractor appointed to complete schools hit by Carillion collapse

A replacement contractor has been appointed to facilitate the completion of school building projects that were stalled by the collapse of UK construction company Carillion.

Three schools expect to have long awaited school buildings completed by September following the announcement this evening to resume building projects that were stalled last January after the company collapsed.

The schools in Wexford and Bray are three of six in total that were being built by a consortium involving Carillion.

This evening, the Dutch Infrastructural Fund, a partner in the consortium, has announced that Northern Irish company Woodvale will resume building work on the schools.

Loreto Secondary in Wexford, and Coláiste Ráithín and Ravenswell Primary School in Bray are now expected to be completed so that they can open this coming September.

In a statement, DIF said Woodvale would also undertake "survey and preliminary work" on three other projects where construction was also halted.

Those projects are Eureka College in Kells, as well as Tyndall College and Carlow Institute of Further Education, both in Carlow town.

These last three projects are at an earlier stage of development.

DIF says the work will be undertaken during the summer and will "provide a detailed scope of works to enable the contract arrangements to be finalised" with a view to completing the projects by the end of this year.

We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

Sammon Construction was building the schools on behalf of the Public Private Partnership consortium.

However, Sammon went into liquidation several weeks ago, blaming losses it incurred from the Carillion collapse for its failure.

All six education projects are part of a Public Private Partnership that the State entered into for the construction and maintenance for 25 years of the facilities.

While DIF has announced that Woodvale will complete the construction work, it has yet to be decided who will maintain the schools.

A spokesperson for the company said he could not comment on this.

Under a Public Private Partnership, the State only begins to pay for the project when the schools are up and running. It then pays for them over the course of 25 years.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said future management would be dealt with separately with an announcement to be made "in due course".

The collapse of Carillion and the resultant collapse of Sammon has left an unknown number of Irish subcontractors with substantial sums of money owed and little prospect of recouping their losses.

The principal of Coláiste Ráithín, Gearóid O Ciaran, welcomed the news.

"Anything that gets us into the school in September is to be welcomed," he said.

He added that the school was now looking forward to finding out how the long-term maintenance contract under the PPP scheme could be met.