I am disappointed that the Minister for Education and Science is not in the House. However, the Minister of State, Deputy Dan Wallace, must know much about this issue and I am glad he is present.
I work in the Cork Institute of Technology so there is a degree of special pleading involved in this matter. The institute is remarkably successful. No one in the region disputes the significant contribution made by graduates of the institute to the pharmaceutical and electronic industries, to business generally and to economic development in the Cork region.
The institute has attracted good students and, therefore, produces good graduates. It has expanded and now has probably twice as many students as five or six years ago. However, the institute faces a growing crisis due to the fact that 50% of its students live in prefabricated or temporary on or off-site accommodation. That is a huge proportion of students.
This situation has developed because of an extraordinary delay in the provision of necessary infrastructural developments. In 1996 approval was granted for a building to house the tourism and catering faculties. In 1997 approval was given for another building to house administration. In 1998 formal approval was given for an apprentice building, a student centre and a high-technology skills building. These approvals span the period beginning when Niamh Breathnach was Minister up to the last Minister, Deputy Martin. However, almost six years after the first project was approved not one of these building projects has commenced.
The institute made decisions regarding student numbers and new courses on the assumption of a building programme which has not materialised. As a consequence, the institute is grossly over-crowded, temporary prefabricated accommodation proliferates and large areas are wasteland on which weeds grow when cars are not parked on them because nothing else can be done as they are designated as spaces on which building is supposed to take place.
My colleague, Deputy Shortall, tabled a question on this issue in the Dáil and received an incredibly misleading answer which effectively suggested that things could happen if the CIT would only produce final proposals. Two final proposals have been sitting in the Department for almost eight months yet nothing has been done. At an earlier stage, all of the proposals were in the Department for months before the necessary approval was given to proceed to the next stage. Two buildings are awaiting approval which is not forthcoming and two further buildings cannot proceed until an application for planning permission is lodged. However, planning permission will not be granted by Cork Corporation until a car park is built, yet the Department refuses to, or will not commit itself to, provide the funding for that car park. This means that two buildings are held up because of a refusal to provide car parking facilities, two are held up because the Department will not make up its mind and, in the process, a fine educational institution which is necessary for the development of the Cork region is becoming a dump to which students will not go.
Guidance councillors will testify that second level students who visit the institute would rather go somewhere else which looks better. This is not the fault of the institute. The staff are superb and there are excellent students. The problem is that the Department of Education and Science is sitting on a major proposal which it encouraged, but it seems reluctant to fund the buildings which students need.
This is a community of almost 8,000 people who are being shoe-horned into buildings which are singularly unsuitable. It is time the Government announced that the funding it promised over five years ago is to be made available.
