Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is effectively telling an Oireachtas committee that buildings with thousands of young people in them for five to six hours or more each day and hundreds of employees working in them are built and no safety checks are carried out on them before the Department takes control of them and puts people into them. I think many people out there will be scratching their heads in disbelief. We do not have a building control unit. The Minister has mentioned Northern Ireland, which does. We just have the builder's word that everything is okay. We have found out in recent days or weeks about something as simple as wall ties in the case of the Tyrrelstown schools. I was talking earlier to someone who asked how much they would even cost. They cost a minuscule amount. It seems to me that what happened is that the Department hired a company that officially had 45 people working for it and had a turnover of £39 million in 2016, £18.6 million of which came directly from taxpayers in the Republic of Ireland and went into the pockets of the company. Only 45 workers were building 20 schools, modular homes and God knows what else. This is not the Minister's personal fault; clearly, it started with Fianna Fáil in 2008, when the banks were being bailed out and there was pressure to get schools built in suburban areas that were growing rapidly and to do so as quickly and as cheaply as possible, given the austerity that reigned. Ministers at that time boasted of 30% savings, rubbing their hands as if this were great. A 30% saving on the normal quotations must mean corners are cut. For the sake of money and profit, the lives of children and adults in these schools have been put at risk, including my daughter's. She sat in two of the affected schools, I believe, because the Powerstown prefab was also one. What people want to know is whether we will have accountability for any of this or whether this will just be fixed up. We have this committee meeting and, apparently, we will be allowed to ask some questions tomorrow - of the Minister for Education and Skills, I hope. I mean no offence to Deputy McHugh, but the Minister for Education and Skills has said he signed off on these buildings with Western Building Systems, or so the company tells us, so he must answer for that.