Mr. Hubert Loftus:

Some of issues raised are reflective of a decade or more of historical under-investment in infrastructure. We are playing catch up. The national development plan provides a good framework to address that and €8.4 billion over the next ten years is a significant investment. That will, as I said, enable us to consider the twin priorities of dealing with demographics and focusing on refurbishment.

On Senator Gallagher's points, in terms of a committee coming together, the Department has a great deal of engagement with educational partners on school building issues. If there are recommendations or reports from the committee, we will examine them. There is a lot of ongoing engagement with the sector on where the pressures are, many of which are common sense such as demographics, refurbishment and so on. I do not think much more can be gained from that process.

The Department does a lot of planning and has a strong forward planning unit, which uses GIS and data, including immigration data. We also examine census and child benefit data, engage with local authorities on housing and so on. We do a lot of planning in respect of identifying need and use a variety of delivery mechanisms to deliver projects. Delivering education projects is not simple or straightforward, no more than housing is. If it was, things would be more straightforward.

The two key issues to be dealt with and managed as part of the provision of new schools are site acquisitions and working through planning permission. They have to be overcome and at that point, there can be certainty in respect of the tender and construction process.

Generally we put up a list of all of our projects on our website and update it on a monthly basis. That list sets out all of the projects that are being dealt with currently, and also sets out the other projects we will do in the future.

Senator Gallagher asked about the delivery of new schools. Over the past eight years, we have delivered 220 new school projects. There can be issues in terms of the difference between when new schools are announced and their delivery but, increasingly, the Department's rapid-build design and build programme is the key delivery mechanism for new school projects. It works very well. It is led by project managers, and is the type of delivery mechanism being used for Ballinteer Educate Together national school and the Gaelscoil in Knocklyon, representatives of which appeared before this committee previously. Those schools are going through the system and are approaching planning permission stage. It also provides a good communication tool for dealing with those schools as well.

We rely, and will rely to an increasing degree, on the ETBs, which provide a regional structure for supporting the schools system generally in terms of management and delivery of projects. That applies not just to the ETB schools but also within the school system generally. We are conscious of that. Much of the "joining the dots" work has been done, which covers the issue raised by the Senator. I am familiar with the Monaghan case in respect of the Army barracks, which worked well.

The Department published guidance on the sharing of facilities last year. It has been updated to cover community usage of school facilities, which is encouraged and supported by the Department. It includes after-school provision and community usage in the evenings. We have good guidance in place for that.

We are conscious of the minor works grant scheme and the need to provide certainty, which was raised by a few members. The grant is paid annually during the school year. The issue for the Department is whether the payment is made in December or January and which calendar year is appropriate. Our intention is to provide as much certainty as possible. The NDP is useful and relevant in that context, because it includes provision, during the lifetime of the plan, for an increased emphasis on maintenance of assets and we are very conscious of that.

The Chair raised the issue of the administrative burden on project managers. That is something we use in terms of our design and build projects and ETBs. It is used in other areas as well, for example our ADAPT programme. We recognise the importance of supporting schools to deal with the administrative burden involved and we will look at that again.

The Chair also mentioned engagement with education partners regarding the summer works scheme, which was referenced by the Minister earlier this year, and proposed better planning and delivery timelines for the scheme. We have spoken to most of our educational partners about that, and there is more engagement to be carried out over the next week or so. We are conscious of the need to provide earlier timelines to schools for the scheme to facilitate better planning and delivery of projects.

The importance of the inventory was raised. We are linking with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport regarding the PE hall audit, which will be useful and relevant. It will provide a whole-of-government context, rather than focusing solely on the educational aspect of it. On the wider inventory, we took forward the most relevant and useful aspects of the pilot, including the geographic information system, GIS, results and the detailed conditions survey. Our experience was that it was difficult, cumbersome and costly to keep up to date, but it was a useful exercise to get information from individual schools. We will look to improve that as we move towards the refurbishment side of things.

Our work with the Society of Actuaries in Ireland, SAI, is also relevant in that context as part of the deep energy retrofit.

Senator Gavan raised some questions about the projects we are delivering and asked how many of them are on Department sites. We can revert to the committee with detailed information, but most of the new primary school projects are on Department sites. Most of the post-primary schools are either on education and training board, ETB, sites, which are State sites, or they are voluntary secondary schools. We can come back to the committee on that. Historically, religious orders were heavily involved in education provision. I cannot change the past and I must work with what we have. Increasingly, primary schools are being provided on State sites.

The issue of ancillary staff was raised. While it does not directly concern the building programme, it pertains to caretakers. It is an issue that reflects the limited funding that was available over the last decade. It is one of a number of priorities that has to be considered in the budgetary process.

We are very conscious of the use of prefabs and so forth. We try to deal with the issue in an integrated way as part of the school building programme. If we take Whitecross national school as an example, the school had prefabricated buildings, as well as refurbishment needs and probably PE hall needs. We deal with all of that as part of the large-scale building project in an integrated way. Our large-scale building programme enables us to make significant inroads into the prefab issue, although it will take time to work through that. However, given the scale of investment in our large-scale projects and our additional accommodation scheme, which provides permanent accommodation to meet schools' additional accommodation requirements, we are making very significant inroads into the prefab issue.

I think that deals with most of the main issues.