I propose to take Questions Nos. 531 and 532 together.
My Department has a strong record in developing low energy educational buildings. For the past eight years my Department has been using a process called the DART approach to develop sustainable and energy efficiency in educational buildings. This acronym focuses on four key areas, namely; Design, Awareness, Research, and Technology.
The performance of my Department in the area of low energy design has been recognised at both National and International level with sustainable energy awards for excellence in Design and Specification and by the Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Awards in 2008.
Rather than develop a unique focus on energy design the Department have taken a more holistic approach and have developed our technical guidance on energy efficiency in school designs as an integral part of the suite of technical guidance documents. These guidelines encourage the design team to take a complete design team approach from project conception. There is particular emphasis on elimination of over design, improved thermal envelope design and improved passive solar design, natural ventilation and day lighting along with advanced heating and lighting controls.
It has been demonstrated that all Primary Schools designed and built in line with the above policy and the technical guidance documents can have an energy performance that is 2.3 times more efficient than International best practice.
The application of wind energy schemes in schools has been explored by my Department and the results indicate that given the scale of application to match demand and capacity in a meaningful way schools are better placed to connect to one of the main wind energy electrical suppliers to maximise the potential of green electricity. This is kept under review given improvements in technology and the market place, with this in mind and given the Government's policy decision to allow micro-generators to sell into the national grid as announced on 26 February 2009, my Department are currently reviewing the above.
It must be remembered that a sustainable solution involves the matching of a sustainable resource with the end users needs and not just the application of the resource.
As with the application of any new technology in schools, decisions on the national roll out and procurement options will only be taken after the technology is tested appropriately in the school environment.