Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe has said he is assessing all capital projects, including school buildings, to ensure the funding is in place to deliver them all.
Yesterday, discussions took place between his department and the Department of Education with a view to securing additional funding to allow 58 school building projects that were "paused" this week to proceed.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Minister Donohoe said what he is doing with the National Development Plan is improving decisions "as opposed to making more money available for it, which will wait until the Budget".
He said there is already "a very ambitious school programme", which has lots of new schools being opened at the moment and in higher and further education there is a new campus at Technological University Dublin.
"Only this week we made further good decisions in relation to new student accommodation. Those are positive things that are happening. We have a number of issues which we'll make progress on".
He said that there are some delays, but it is "to be expected when you are investing over €12 billion in delivering new projects, that not every project unfolds in the way you want.
"And the reason for that is we're experiencing now such change in the cost of raw materials and due to the war in Ukraine," he said.
"And of course, we have continual challenges in getting enough and the right people to do the work that we want," he added.
Mr Donohoe said money is being spent delivering new skills, new universities, better public transport across the country "and, critically, is also leading to more homes being built while knowing we need to deliver even more."
