The situation at the moment, as the Deputy will know, is that a "bundle" of five post primary schools that will cater for a total of about 3,500 pupils is being built under the PPP process. The timescale is quite short and it is envisaged that these schools will be ready for occupation at the end of the current calendar year. One of them is in Ballincollig. The procedure for these projects is that the schools will be designed, built, financed and operated for 25 years by, in this case, Jarvis Projects Ltd. The school building will be of the highest quality because the maintenance, cleaning, security, ground maintenance, etc, will be conducted by the project company. This means that they will build the schools to the highest specification and standard to ensure that the maintenance is not a huge drain on their financial resources. The schools will have extensive facilities, including extensive sports facilities, laboratories and so on. These facilities will be available to the local community.
The day to day running of the schools will be a matter for local management. The cost of hiring the school out to clubs and societies outside school hours is an issue that will have to be addressed, particularly when the schools are completed and begin to operate. They will probably be operational for a little while before we can be certain how that will work out. The Department is anxious that this will work in favour of the local community, the people for whom the school is built in the first instance. Officers of the Department and I would be very pleased to meet concerned people from the local community, immediately if necessary and again when the project is completed. We also intend to monitor the project very closely. Ours is one of the first Departments to establish a PPP unit, headed up by a principal officer, which is looking very closely at every aspect of this and keeping the whole process under review even as we speak and as the buildings are being constructed. We are also looking at future PPPs because we hope they will be a way of ensuring we get a higher quality building in some cases and relieve school principals from day-to-day maintenance of buildings, something they have been requesting for years.
The committee mentioned the matter of escalating costs. I do not have the exact figures with me, though I can certainly provide them if necessary, but I understand the total cost of the package of five buildings and their facilities is €81 million. It may be of interest to the committee that the European Investment Bank, which examined the commercial bank funding aspect of the project and advised the Department, said that the terms of the offer on the education project were the best it had seen in any European PPP. We were very pleased with that. The option of refinancing some of these projects at a later stage, should that be necessary, is built into the contract. It may be of benefit to the committee to know, though members may already be aware of it, that we have two other major PPP projects as well, both, indeed, not too far from Cork. One is the Cork School of Music and the other is the National Maritime College in Ringaskiddy. They are at an advanced stage, the Cork School of Music being the more advanced despite being held up by a planning appeal. It is now moving forward at full speed again and we will be keeping a close eye on it.