Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is accurate to say that planning permissions would not be the central feature in the way the Department plans; it would be births within the catchment and the pattern of births leading to preschool, first year, etc. We track the data. The Department breaks the country down into 314 squares within which the population projections, both at primary and at secondary level, are forecast against the available places within that catchment. It is where we anticipate the growth in numbers which are documented by children who are coming through the scheme or from other population indicators, such as those of the CSO and our own school data. We use that to forecast. That is the basis on which we identify an area that has a shortage of school places, either at primary or secondary. We then look to identify whether the best way to provide those extra places is the expansion of existing schools or new builds. That is the process.

As the Chairman will be aware, sometimes people would like a particular type of school. The Department looks at the whole catchment and all the school places available to it. It does not look at the preferences of parents in planning the buildings. There could be spaces available in one school and a lot of people want another school, and that can result in pressures which we all know about. I suppose, as the Deputy rightly says, if we had more money we could provide more options. The policy has been to live within the available capital that we can get for this purpose and to provide for the growing population areas. I think we stay on top of those, but there can be difficulties with individual parents.

The forecasting of superannuation is a tricky matter too because staff have a certain degree of flexibility in when they time their exits. We have to anticipate what that might be from year to year and that gives rise to difficulties in forecasting. That is one of the big reasons for the Supplementary Estimate.

This is perhaps one of the biggest Supplementary Estimates, although it is probably not as big as some of the other areas because Health, Social Protection and Justice all had increases. I suppose this was flagged. The €100 million, which is the mainstay of it in terms of substantive change, was flagged much earlier in the year. It reflected the genuine pressure on the building programmes that we needed to respond to. It has been helpful that we have been able to do that and we are building on that for next year as well.

As Deputy Thomas Byrne and others have often said, the bigger capital problem is in the third level area where we do not have anything like a capital programme commensurate with our ambitions. This will be an issue where we would be hoping in the upcoming mid-term capital review we can look to try to increase capital allocation in the higher and further education area. The total provision in the higher and further education area is relatively small, at approximately €50 million. It is a small capital budget compared to the pressures. That is wrapped up in the wider discussions the committee is having.

I think I have dealt with the issues. Did the Chair have another issue?