Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

My predecessor announced a five year building programme and schools with major construction projects are working their way through them. All of these projects will be constructed. There are also programmes for prefab replacement which were announced by my predecessor at the beginning of the year. As in any Department, when one comes to the end of the year sometimes there are reasons why projects are delayed. The money may not be spent in that particular year but in most of these delayed cases it will be spent early in the coming year. In order to ensure we do not have an underspend in our capital programme, which none of us would want, money can be transferred to a project that can use it in the current year. That does not mean that the delayed projects will not proceed. They are already in the programme announced for this year.

In regard to the schools to which the Deputies referred, we will be announcing the next major construction programme in early 2015. Schools that are on a list and have been waiting will be considered for that programme. In terms of major construction, the previous programme was almost completely driven by demographics and growth in numbers, and the need to ensure that every child had a school and a classroom to attend.

That was the primary driver of the major spend over recent years. In the coming programme, we will have to account for demographics again. We also want to look at older schools that need replacement and we will continue with the prefab replacement programme. There are several strands to the schools building programme and there are various reasons some of them have not moved as quickly as expected. One reason is the new building control regulations which came into force on 1 March. In some cases, these have caused some of the projects to go slower than was originally expected. This accounts for some of the underspend. Rather than lose the moneys because we cannot spend them, we would use them in another project that is part of the spend.