I am an assistant secretary in the Department of Education and Science. One of my areas of responsibility is the provision of school accommodation. I am accompanied by Mr. Tony Dalton, principal officer in the planning and building unit in Tullamore, and Ms Jackie Hynes, assistant principal officer. Also present with us is Mr. Frank Murray of the Commission on School Accommodation and his colleagues, Sr. Eileen Randles and Ms Eimer Lynch.
I thank the joint committee for allowing us the opportunity to outline the position relating to the provision of school accommodation. I stress that the Department is addressing school accommodation needs proactively, a structured school planning process is in place, backed up by open and transparent prioritisation criteria for progressing building projects, and rapidly developing areas are assigned the highest priority.
Innovations in the delivery of school buildings such as generic repeat designs and the use of the design and build model ensure that new school buildings are delivered in the fastest time possible. In recent years, the Department has also adopted a policy of devolving much greater responsibility to local school management authorities to manage and deliver smaller building projects, thereby freeing the Department to concentrate on larger-scale projects. This devolution of responsibility to local school management authorities has been widely welcomed and is very successful, and we intend to develop this scheme further.
This year alone, more than 1,300 building projects will be carried out under the Department's capital programme. All these projects were assessed by the school planning section of the Department before any funding could be committed to them. This process of assessment of need is an absolute requirement in accordance with the project assessment procedures laid down by the Department of Finance for all publicly funded capital projects.
To put it in context in terms of pupil numbers, taking new primary schools recently completed, under construction or just now going to construction, the Department is delivering 15,000 new pupil places, almost 70% of which are in the Leinster area. This figure relates solely to new schools and does not include an additional 8,750 school places being delivered under the permanent accommodation scheme.
The next tranche of projects are in the pipeline and due to go to construction during 2007. We have just come from a meeting with the Minister regarding the next tranche of the capital programme. These projects will deliver a further 9,500 pupil places in new school buildings and a further 5,500 pupil places in existing schools, with more than 70% of these places being in the Leinster area which has the largest concentration of need. In addition, the programme of modernisation in existing schools will continue and will eventually encompass all schools. Most of these projects will not make headlines in the media.
By any stretch of the imagination, this is an enormous output, addressing not only the needs in rapidly developing areas but also the needs of schools throughout the country. This has been delivered by a staff of fewer than 100 people, less than the complement of people available in the planning and building unit more than 20 years ago delivering a substantially reduced programme.
Given the quantity and range of projects involved, difficulties are as inevitable as they are unwelcome. In the case of new schools, these difficulties mainly relate to site acquisition which is critical to the delivery of any new school building project. Added difficulties have arisen more recently with objections to planning permission, which is becoming a more frequent aspect, especially where local residents perceive that a school will give rise to a substantial increase in traffic in the vicinity of their homes. This is a new reality the Department and school communities increasingly must deal with.
However, the time required for the resolution of any particular problem cannot automatically be interpreted as poor planning. In some cases, the resolution of such problems may require interim solutions that are less than ideal, such as the provision of temporary accommodation in existing buildings or through the provision of temporary buildings. In all cases, the Department requires the full co-operation of local management authorities and a willingness to acknowledge that not all issues are within the control of the Department or amenable to immediate resolution. In virtually all cases, management bodies work very closely with the Department and are often instrumental in coming up with imaginative solutions to temporary problems once they know that funding is forthcoming from the Department.
The main objective of the Department and of management bodies is to avoid situations where there is uncertainty as to where any cohort of pupils will be attending school at the beginning of a school year. We work tirelessly to ensure those problems are overcome but they exist and can give rise to considerable difficulties for local school communities.
The demand for additional school accommodation has escalated considerably in recent years. A number of factors contribute to this demand. These are as follows: the growth in the schoolgoing population in rapidly developing areas, including the impact of inward migration which is having a considerable impact on the requirement for school accommodation, especially in certain areas of Dublin and in the large urban areas; the rapid expansion in teacher numbers, particularly in the area of special needs; the demands to cater for diversity through the recognition of new gaelscoileanna and Educate Together schools; and population movements from older, more established urban areas to outer suburban areas.
Demographic increases in population are now the main driver of growth in demand for school accommodation. The Department is planning provision for a minimum increase in the national primary schoolgoing population of 58,000 pupils over the next five years. This increase will require about 2,300 classrooms to be built nationwide during that time. These extra classrooms will be provided through a combination of brand new schools in developing areas and extensions to existing schools.
The Department uses a number of sources of information to plan for the correct level of school accommodation. One of the most important sources is the local authority area development planning process. The Department is included among the prescribed authorities to which local authorities are statutorily obliged to send draft development plans or proposed variations to development plans. As a matter of course, there is ongoing liaison with local authorities to establish the location, scale and pace of any major proposed developments and their possible implications for school provision. Site reservations for new schools are made under this process and either the Department or a patron body acquires these sites as and when the need arises.
A substantial amount of time and resources of the Department's school planning section are dedicated to ongoing contacts with the local authorities, especially in Dublin and within the Dublin commuter belt, to monitor housing development and to establish the timescale for the delivery of extra school accommodation. The Department is also represented on various bodies such as the Adamstown and Hansfield strategic development zone steering committees and the north fringe forum steering committee, among others to obtain first-hand information on matters of relevance to school provision.
A practical example of the output from this level of contact with a local authority is the strategic development zone at Adamstown. The Department worked closely with South Dublin County Council and the developers to produce an integrated solution to education and community facilities that matches the delivery of new housing. Under the SDZ planning scheme, there is a requirement that schools are in position ahead of or in line with demand. In fulfilment of this requirement, two primary schools will be in place in Adamstown next year and further provision is being planned on a phased basis. This approach to housing, educational and community facilities is clearly one which the Department would like to see replicated throughout the country and it is pursuing this agenda actively with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and in its contact with other local authorities.
Another practical output example is the innovative approach to partnership with Fingal County Council whereby schools will be delivered in tandem with much-needed community facilities. Under the terms of a specific agreement and based on the Department's school planning projections, Fingal County Council will identify and acquire appropriate sites where schools with enhanced sporting, community and arts facilities will be built to the benefit of both the school and the wider community. This is an exercise in ensuring we have joined-up government in the provision of local facilities. In practice, Fingal County Council will identify the sites when adopting its local area plans. The council will go on to acquire sufficient land as recommended by the Department on which an appropriate sized school or schools for that local area can be built.
In return, the design of the schools on these sites will be varied to meet community needs identified by the council. The range of enhanced combination facilities can include full-sized sports halls, stage and dressing rooms, community meeting rooms, all-weather pitches and playgrounds. These additional facilities, which will be over and above the Department's standard specifications for schools, will be available not only to the school during normal school hours but also to the local community in the evenings, at weekends and during school holidays. Obviously, the local authority is fully funding the additional costs over and above what the Department of Education and Science would provide for school accommodation.
The Department wants to see this approach replicated throughout the country. With the assistance of Meath County Council, the new multi-school campus arrangement for Laytown will have elements of this arrangement while rapidly developing areas in Waterford and Kildare will also feature this approach. These examples serve to illustrate both the extent of the work being carried out with local authorities and the importance which the Department attaches to relationships with them. I would like to take this process much further and we are developing proposals for a more structured and active involvement by all local authorities, particularly for the acquisition of new school sites, which is where the main bottleneck occurs. I have in mind an agency approach whereby the local authorities would act on behalf of the Department according to particular criteria, which we would agree.
Over and above local authority contacts, the Department has introduced its own area-based approach to school planning, particularly for longer-term provision. This involves a public consultation process and published area development plans which form a blueprint for the development of schools in a specific geographic area over a ten-year timeframe. Mr. Murray will deal with this aspect in more detail. These area development plans obviously feed into the capital programmes and are used to identify where site reservations are necessary.
I will now speak about the purchase of sites. Following the planning process itself, where a new school is required, the next step is to acquire a site. It is important to understand that there is an historical context to the acquisition of school sites. Traditionally, responsibility for acquiring sites rested with patron bodies. In 1999 the Minister took the decision that the Department would purchase sites for new schools where patron bodies were unable or unwilling for whatever reason to do so. However, the option remains for a patron body to purchase a site if it so wishes and, in certain circumstances, site acquisition by the patron in accordance with the traditional model of provision remains a preference, especially where the patron has strong views on the ownership of the property. This can be beneficial to the Department and to schools, especially if a church authority or other patron body already has in its ownership land which can be made available for school building purposes at no charge to the State.
The difficulties attaching to site acquisition, regardless of who the purchaser is, cannot be underestimated even where sites are reserved. Members of the committee will be aware of the historical and constitutional background to land ownership in this country and I do not intend to dwell on that today. Effectively, under the current regime, the Department of Education and Science is just another buyer in a buoyant market. This is compounded by the fact that in most cases, the Department needs land right at the heart of housing developments. Unlike for commercial developers, by the very nature of school provision, which is grounded in ease of access by the residents of housing developments, the range of choice open to us is quite limited.
The willingness of a landowner to sell the land is the first critical issue and cost is the other. Members will appreciate that the Department is obliged at all times to achieve value for taxpayers' money. It cannot pay over market value for any piece of land or property. Independent valuations must always be undertaken to ensure that this does not happen. Exorbitant price demands can and have led to delays in site acquisitions. Owing to procurement requirements, which are an absolute for all public bodies, the Department must always reserve the option of walking away from a proposed site acquisition where the price is considered by any objective criteria to be exorbitant. We will walk away where the price is exorbitant, and we have done so.
Given the difficulties now being encountered with site acquisition, the Department will increasingly ask local authorities to place compulsory purchase orders on land for it into the future. However, this will not provide a quick-fix solution either. A process needs to be followed and this will be time-consuming. The Department will also be moving ahead to acquire urgently needed sites regardless of whatever patron might eventually run the school. It has already done this to good effect in the Adamstown strategic development zone, to which I have referred.
The Department's strategies are as follows: proactive planning by close and regular engagement with local authorities; the implementation of a partnership approach with local authorities to deliver community facilities; the active participation where possible of school management authorities; early involvement in education provision in strategic development zones; publication and implementation of area development plans; the use of generic repeat designs, and design and build contracts for new primary and post-primary schools; and an openness to the delivery of schools by innovative methods possible, which includes PPPs that we are developing and will have a further bundle to release to the market.
The level of work being done under the schools building programme is at an all-time high. While increased investment is a central reason for this — €500 million will be spent this year alone on primary and post primary schools — radical changes in how projects are planned and managed have also made a major difference in ensuring that, in the majority of cases, provision will be delivered in line with demand and in line with the Department's prioritisation criteria.
I understand that Mr. Murray wishes to say a few words on behalf of the Commission on School Accommodation. Following that, we will be happy to answer any questions members may have.