Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As requested, I will keep this opening statement short. The net voted sum proposed by the Department for 2013 is €7,926.9 million, made up of current expenditure of €7,514.4 million and capital expenditure of €412.5 million. The Department has supplied briefing material on the 2013 Estimate, which members will have received. The document is in a new format and seeks to reflect the new performance budgeting approach to the Estimates process.

Under this new process the traditional expenditure-type information is accompanied by additional detail on the outputs to be delivered and outcomes achieved with the funding voted in the Estimate. The move to performance budgeting has also resulted in a restructuring of the Department's Vote to reflect the high-level goals in the Department's statement of strategy. This explains the revised structure of the subheads in the Vote this year. The new-format briefing supplied is part of a pilot project and is, by definition, a work-in-progress. The Department will continue to work with the committee and with the Oireachtas services to improve the effectiveness of this new approach.

The briefing material supplied summarises the overall expenditure position for the Department in 2013 and how it is divided across the Department's four high-level goals. Almost four in every five euro of current expenditure in the Vote is on pay and pensions, supporting almost 92,000 whole-time posts in the education sector. This equates to one third of overall public sector employment. The paybill also covers the costs of 2,700 Civil Service posts and posts in various other education bodies and agencies.

Details are provided of key outputs to be achieved in 2013 under each high-level goal, as well as information on savings measures introduced to maintain education expenditures within their overall ceiling. These measures are required to keep within the general government deficit ceiling of 7.4% of GDP for 2013.

While I would prefer not to have to seek any expenditure savings in education, I have sought, with Government colleagues, to protect front-line education services as far as possible. Budget 2013 protected the pupil-teacher ratio in primary level schools and in free second-level schools, while there was a two-point increase in the ratio for the 55 fee-charging schools. It is expected overall that some 900 additional teachers will be hired for the next school year. Special needs assistant numbers were also maintained, and the DEIS scheme was also protected in the budget. I also sought to make provision for several important education initiatives. These include further funding for the national literacy and numeracy strategy; an overhaul of the junior cycle; the continued roll-out of high-speed broadband to all second-level schools; and funding under the national training fund for extra places under the labour market education and training fund, called Momentum, and under the Springboard programme.

The allocation for capital expenditure in the Estimate was almost €414 million, along with a carryover of €19 million from the previous year. This forms part of the €2.2 billion five-year capital investment programme for education. The allocation was announced as part of the infrastructure and capital investment framework for 2012 to 2016. Major elements of the programme this year include the following: a total of 50 major school building projects scheduled to advance to tender and construction, which will deliver over 25,000 permanent school places; a further 63 school projects carried forward from last year, including eight projects under bundle 3 of the public private partnership programme; and an investment of €60 million under the devolved additional accommodation scheme.

In addition to the provisions for capital expenditure in the 2013 Revised Estimate, earlier this month I announced a further provision of €50 million that will enable 28 further school building projects, made up of 18 primary and ten post-primary schools, to go ahead. The Department's total investment in these new school projects, which will provide facilities for over 12,000 students, will amount to €100 million, with the balance coming from within the existing school building budget. On Monday this week, I announced that a total of €15 million has been allocated in 2013-14 to replace prefabs and provide permanent classrooms and resource rooms. Some 46 schools with 115 prefabs will be offered grants to provide the new facilities. This is a follow-on to the 2012 scheme, which provided funding in excess of €42 million for the replacement of more than 458 prefabs.

As part of the economic stimulus package announced in July last year, the planned consolidation of the Dublin Institute of Technology at the Grangegorman campus was signalled. The first phase of the public private partnership works proper, at a value of €180 million, will be completed in 2017, with 9,500 students to move to new facilities on the campus at that time. In advance of the PPP works commencing, enabling infrastructure works are required to be delivered through conventional procurement, for which Government approval of almost €80 million was secured as part of the stimulus package. Some of these works have already begun on site. The target is to have 1,000 students on site by September 2014 in the first phase of relocation.

I do not propose to go into further detail regarding the Department's Estimate at this stage but I, along with the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, would be pleased to respond to any matters raised by the committee members. I commend the Estimates to the committee.