Mr. Hubert Loftus:

Yes. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked quite a few questions and I will try to group them thematically. There are two themes to consider in terms of the building programme generally and the adequacy of it. One relates to catering for demographics and the other relates to catering for the existing school stock and refurbishment. In terms of catering for demographics, the Department is fully satisfied that, notwithstanding issues that can arise on individual projects, the school building programme caters adequately for need in terms of demographics. We are very conscious of and recognise and acknowledge the need to have a strengthened focus on existing school stock, and that is one of the reasons we have a significant increase in funding under the national development plan. In the past ten years we invested €4.9 billion in school buildings, and in the next ten years the investment will be €8.4 billion, which is a significant increase. That increase recognises that demographics are still a significant issue to manage, but it will also facilitate a very much strengthened focus on refurbishment of the existing school stock. There will be particular strands to the refurbishment programme in terms of the provision of PE halls, labs and prefab replacement. As much as possible we will try to do that in an integrated way in terms of addressing individual school needs.

I do not have figures for the number of new applications for school building projects to hand, but we do not have a big flow of new applications for large-scale projects. There is an existing cohort of applications that have not been processed going back a number of years. It is of the order of approximately 570 applications from schools for large-scale projects.