Vol. 562 No. 3
33 Mr. Connolly asked the Minister for Education and Science if resources will be provided to primary school boards of management in rural communities, to enable them to replace substandard and unacceptable school buildings with modern school facilities. [5744/03]
The 2003 school building programme has now been published and full details in relation to individual projects are available on my Department's website at www.education.ie.
The programme was published on 22 January 2003 and 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. Twenty school communities will benefit from this pilot initiative. At the end of the pilot phase, a review will be undertaken by my Department with a view to the expansion of the initiative in 2004, subject to the availability of funding, to other small primary schools.
