The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn T.D., has announced that an international design competition for Irish primary school buildings is to be launched in September.

Speaking at the annual awards ceremony of the Royal Institutes of Architects of Ireland, the Minister said: "The 2013 Primary School Design Competition will be open to the architect community in Ireland and overseas. It will be aimed at providing innovative architectural designs that can anticipate and respond to changing learning needs of primary school children in the 21st century."

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The competition follows a highly successful Post Primary School Design Competition held by the Department of Education and Skills in 2012. The winning entry in that competition was awarded the commission for the design of a new Post-Primary school in Kingswood, Tallaght.

Minister Quinn said: "The Kingswood competition attracted the highest ever number of entries for an Irish design competition, with 154 submissions, including 43 international entries from 14 countries.

"The fantastic response rate and the calibre of the submissions shows that the competition process is a valid alternative way of procuring new school designs and one which can be used for other projects at both primary and post-primary levels. I would anticipate that there will be a similar high level of interest in this competition."

(CD/JP)