A point was raised about a reduction in funding for CABAS in Cork. There is no reduction in that regard. I am stating that from general knowledge about what is happening in the Department. There is a demand from CABAS for various sums of money for running the school - which is part of a pilot scheme this year - but those sums are far in excess of what would be given to a mainstream school with children with special needs. There is a whole range of extras involved as well. Discussions are taking place between the Department and CABAS and the other schools that are setting up as ABA schools. We are not talking about a reduction in funding, but we are certainly not talking about increases of the magnitude that the people in the school have requested. I do not have the full details in that regard, but it gives the Deputies a broad idea of our position.
I beg the Chairman's indulgence to address the building programme because if I answer these questions properly it may obviate the need for another round. Let us now consider the criteria used in establishing our priorities. New schools are obviously catering for substantial increases in enrolments in areas of rapidly increasing population and these are accorded high priority. Where specialist accommodation is needed in a school for children with special needs, such as autism or speech and language disorders, that is taken into account and is a high priority. Where the replacement or refurbishment or old buildings - including old prefabs - is concerned, obviously the replacement of a building that is structurally unsound has the highest priority. Schools that are amalgamating will generally have a higher priority than new classrooms or schools in another area. We are keen to encourage amalgamations and that is why they are afforded a certain priority.
Regarding people who are asking where they are on the list, I intend to produce a list in January which will outline schools that are under construction and schools that may or will go to construction during the year if money is available. We will then list stages 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 and indicate whether schools are going to move from one stage to another. Obviously, money is the main factor in this regard.
I will make the system as transparent as possible so Deputy Enright, my own colleagues and others will not feel the need to table parliamentary questions because the information will be available for them. It will save the Deputy and others from wondering whether construction will proceed in certain schools, etc. I want transparency because there is a false perception that people are jumping the queue. People are not jumping the queue, but schools have been allowed onto the list, which clogs it up, and they remain on it for a long period because of the seven stages involved.
Everyone knows the different schools on the list. Some of them have been on it for many years. They have been left on it for so long and a great deal of progress has not been made because of the manner in which the seven stages are applied. Those stages filter out certain schools in terms of building projects. The authorities at these schools feel that everybody else on the queue is overtaking them, but that is not true. Schools might not like where they are on the list, but at least they are aware of their position.
The Department has indicated that there are 400 building projects on the list. I do not know the position regarding each of these projects. I will be obliged to have further discussions with the building unit to ascertain how many are at stages 1, 2 and 3, etc., and how many, to use the famous phrase, are in architectural planning. It probably means a person wrote to the Department asking for a new school and provided figures for enrolments. The Department probably decided to add them to the list of required new schools but it has not progressed much further than that. I may be wrong on that, but not by too much. It causes many problems. Deputies will jump up and down when they see the list. This will cause fewer problems for us all in the longer term.
I do not blame the boards of management, in the majority of schools, for the condition of the schools. However, I blame some of them. Because it takes so long to get through the building programme, there are schools that have made a deliberate decision to let the school fall down around their ears to maximise the political pressure on the Government. There is no excuse for a board of management, or an individual member of one, showing RTE or TV3 a broken window, or rat infestation and asking for a new school. One would not allow that to happen in one's own house and it should not be allowed to happen in primary schools.
There are schools in very bad condition. Quite a few boards of management could make their schools comfortable if they used their devolved maintenance grants. In recent weeks I saw a number of schools on television and in the newspapers. I have been told that in one case a local builder offered to work free of charge on a school to make it habitable. He was politely told by either the principal or the board of management not to do that because they wanted a new school. A school in my constituency was offered €300,000 six months ago to do a thorough job but refused to reply to the Department's letter. This was done to put political pressure on me. I will not cave in to this. The children are my priority and I do not want anybody - principals, boards of management, the INTO or anybody else - to use children to make political points. I accept that conditions are bad enough in a number of schools as it is and I do not want them to be made any worse.
The Estimates show a 4% reduction, or 14% when the additional €19 million is taken into account. I hope through the talks my Department is having with the Department of Finance the gap of 14% may be bridged, but it will not be bridged before January. Five schools are to be built by PPPs at a cost of €10 million per year for several years. We now have those schools, if we had to take pay for that out of capital funding it would have cost €70 million and many fewer schools would be built or refurbished under the capital programme. We must look at ways, other than the traditional ones, of building schools and the PPP is the way forward. PPPs provide a top quality school with no maintenance costs for 25 years as the company will provide that. Less is withdrawn from the capital budget because the initial outlay is less, therefore, more schools can be built. The Department has control over the standards that are applied.
The PPP programme must be balanced - all the annual capital fund cannot be used to repay the schools built under PPPs. Deputy Gogarty raised the question of Jarvis in England. PFI, particularly in the UK, made mistakes and did not work well. We will undoubtedly make mistakes but we have learned from the mistakes made in Britain. A local company built the school in Tubbercurry. The committee should take the opportunity to visit the school in Tubbercurry, or any of the other PPP schools. The specifications are so high that it will cause a problem in the ordinary building programme.
Deputy Andrews raised a question about the size of primary schools. They can be too small, but I hope a mixture of primary and secondary schools can be bundled in order to seek PPP quotes.
The Department's list of priority schools is the only one from which I work. I do not know what criteria the INTO used in selecting the schools on its list but I understand it was conducted as a survey. I acknowledge the interest and concern of the INTO but objective criteria must be used. The five year rolling programme is part PPP and part Exchequer funded.
Deputy Staunton asked about better cost-effectiveness. I do not believe in paying architects or design teams 12.5% or 10% for one school after another. The Department has introduced an element of competition. The list of those who can apply for tenders is being extended and the fee structure for design teams will be taken into account. We are trying to standardise designs. In some cases, we can estimate costs and allocate money to schools with, say, four classrooms or less so they can have the freedom to carry out the work within guidelines. We are examining ways and means of reducing costs in that way.
The technical accounting issues in relation to the third level——
