Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I can see the Attorney General's point and I am aware that her office has become much stricter in the context of powers being devolved to Ministers in circumstances where such powers are not bestowed in primary legislation. However, a one-page Bill could resolve this issue and the Minister could easily bring one forward if he so desired. I suspect that the real issue is that he is of the view that it would be unreasonable to introduce a mandatory scheme without providing schools with the necessary funding. Perhaps it is easy to say that he is hiding behind the legislative barrier when the reality is that a mandatory scheme could not be introduced unless funding could be made available to schools.

I inquired earlier about the gap in funding between schools that are setting up schemes under the new initiative and those which already have schemes. I appreciate that €8.3 million is being given to the remainder of the schools but that still equates to €20 per pupil for DEIS schools and €18 per pupil for non-DEIS schools introducing schemes now, as opposed to €150 and €100 per pupil for schools which already have them. There is a huge gap in this regard, which is unfair. In the context of the forthcoming budget the Department should be seeking money to bridge that gap. Priority should be given to finding money for school book schemes. I accept the point that only €6 million was available to begin with and that a policy decision was made to the effect that the best way to use this was to focus on a small number of schools.

We can argue about the equity of this but it must be accepted that the current position whereby one school is receiving €20 per pupil while another is getting €150 is unfair. As the INTO representatives pointed out, the school in receipt of €20 per pupil might not have a big scheme in place and may only have just introduced it. These schools may only have a handful of books as they begin rolling out their schemes and they will not then have the funding necessary to allow them to catch up. That is unfair and perhaps our guests from the Department will seek to procure additional funding in this regard in the forthcoming budget.

In the context of energy, it was recently brought to my attention that schools which erect their own wind turbines cannot sell power to the grid. This issue was raised with me six or nine months ago by the management at a rural school and when I raised it with the Minister, he confirmed that schools cannot sell power they produce to the grid. Has any further consideration been given to this matter? The school to which I refer is in a location where there is a great deal of wind. There are some 4,000 schools throughout the country and many of them would be in locations similar to the school in question. Small schools could, if they so desired, erect small wind farms to meet their energy needs and any excess could be sold to the grid. Surely these are the type of projects to which we should be giving consideration. I do not know if any action has been taken in respect of this matter in the nine months since I was contacted by the school to which I refer.