Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 March 2004
202 Ms Lynch asked the Minister for Education and Science if the building of schools by public private partnerships has been an economically sound decision; if the running costs of these schools has decreased or increased in view of the fact that these schools have been operating for more than a year; and if he will commission a report to quantify exactly the overall cost-benefit of these public private partnership agreements for schools. [8257/04]
View answerThe Department's interest in participating in the PPP pilot programme arose primarily for four reasons: to take school principals away from running buildings and thereby allow them concentrate on their core educational and management functions; to test value for money of school provision over a longer period than construction; to get new ideas on school design through an output-based approach; and to see better usage of school buildings outside school hours.
The contract for the first pilot education PPP in Ireland, a bundle of five post-primary schools, was signed in November 2001. Construction of the schools was completed by the end of December 2002, four of the schools ahead of schedule while the fifth was signed-off as scheduled. The speedy delivery of infrastructure is one of the attractions of this form of procurement. The private sector is paid on the basis of a combination of asset usage, availability and performance during the life of the project — in this case 25 years — and is not paid upfront for construction. Under PPPs, the private sector is required to take a stake in the whole-life cycle of the building, aligning responsibility for operation and maintenance with responsibility for design and construction.
The cost of operating the schools is determined by the project agreement. This provides for a review of the annual operating costs of the schools and allows for an inflationary increase in this element of the unitary payment. My Department is pleased with the project and is in the process of undertaking an initial evaluation of the project to date. As part of this evaluation, regular meetings are held with the management of each of the schools to allow for updates on the operation of the individual schools.
My Department provides grants to post-primary school to meet the running costs of the schools. These grants have been significantly reduced in respect of each of the PPP schools.
