Vol. 562 No. 3
1 Ms Enright asked the Minister for Education and Science the way in which he intends to proceed with the many hundreds of remaining schools requiring and awaiting commencement of projects in view of the fact that only 12 primary and 14 post-primary schools building projects will be started in 2003. [5971/03]
The 2003 school building programme, which was published on 22 January 2003, amounted to €342.9 million, four times the amount allocated in 1997. The 2003 programme will deliver 146 large-scale projects at primary and post-primary level. In addition approximately 433 schools will benefit in some way from the capital programme and of course all primary schools benefit directly from the devolved grants scheme for minor works.
An innovative feature of this year's programme is the introduction of a devolved building initiative for small rural primary schools. A total of 20 school communities will benefit from this pilot initiative.
The cost of the 2003 building programme published on my Department's website provides details of the level of commitments to be met in 2003 and the estimated amount available for new projects.
The Government remains committed to continuing the work it has started and to consolidate the substantial progress that has been made to ensure that the needs of schools throughout the country are met over time. The process of investment in educational infrastructure begun by the previous Government will be continued as outlined in An Agreed Programme for Government. To meet our objectives I will be looking closely at the potential for using PPP mechanisms and the concept advanced in An Agreed Programme for Government of a multi-annual programme schools modernisation fund to be financed through the National Development Finance Agency.
To ensure the long-term planning of capital provision through a precise and detailed identification of accommodation needs in schools, my Department has undertaken, on a pilot basis, a comprehensive inventory of accommodation of 115 primary and post-primary schools in County Kildare. The information gained from the survey will be placed on a geographic information system, GIS, database. My Department is at present undertaking a detailed assessment of the pilot phase of the inventory to determine the exact nature and extent of the nationwide survey.
The proposed standards will be largely based on the planning guidelines for primary and post-primary schools currently used by my Department.
While I accept that the programme is an attempt to begin to tackle the school building problem, I do not think that the schools believe it gives the amount of information the Minister claims it does.
There are a number of primary projects at an advanced stage of architectural planning. A school in Clare is listed at band 1 which is for the most urgent category of school, but it is only at stage 4 or 5 and pre-tender documents have only recently been requested. There are two schools from Cork which are at bands 3 and 4, that is, in less urgent categories. In one of these cases the pre-tender documents have been received and in the other they have been approved. Technically they are much further advanced even though they are less urgent, yet they are all on the same list. What criteria will the Department put in place to deal with this situation? How will the schools be assessed and dealt with? Will the ones at a more advanced stage of planning proceed more quickly than the ones that require to be done more urgently?
I welcome what the Minister said in terms of public private partnerships. I raised this issue on the Adjournment on Tuesday in regard to two schools in Portlaoise that were given the impression that they would be dealt with under PPP arrangements but the response did not mention public private partnerships. Will the Minister outline to the House a programme for schools that will be dealt with under public private partnership arrangements because they were specifically excluded from the school building programme list?
Does the Minister accept the current level of waste that is generated in the system? One primary school in Cavan has spent over €100,000 in getting to its current stage, yet nothing further will happen this year and we do not know what the situation will be next year. Much of the work will have to be done again in terms of quantity surveyors reports and so forth. Much more money will have to be clocked up before the project advances further. Has the Minister made progress in terms of using similar plans or using a different planning process so that schools can share, to some degree, existing plans to save money. I welcome the proposal in terms of the multi-annual programme but I wonder what the timescale is for that?
In regard to the final point in the question about similar plans, they are nearing completion and are being worked on by officials in the Department. In regard to the issue of money being wasted because plans are advanced to a certain level and cannot go further, that is a problem of the system as it existed up to now. This is one of the reasons I initiated the programme to publicise exactly where each project stands and why I am not allowing further projects into the programme until we have cleared out some of the backlog. Following that, we will move in an orderly manner to bring the rest of the schools into the programme.
The Deputy is correct in that in the past projects have been brought so far and then left for five, six and seven years because the money was unavailable for them to proceed, yet when the money became available they had to go through the same procedures again. That will not arise in the system that I am putting in place. A school will not be allowed to go from one stage to the next unless the money is available.
We are in discussion with the Department of Finance in regard to PPPs. The Deputy may be aware that a problem has arisen at European level in regard to PPPs and how they are to be treated for GGB and within the Maastricht guidelines. Solely from the point of view of the money that is made available, public private partnerships would not give us added value, if you like, if the EUROSTAT ruling was not changed. There are other reasons we should pursue a PPP approach but it would not give me an advantage from the point of view of value-added at the moment and that has to be sorted out.
