Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate we have correspondence and a good deal of work to get through but given the seriousness of the issue involving the 40 schools and media indications that the number will be even more than that, we need to allocate an unforeseen but serious level of priority to examining that issue. When the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills appeared before the committee when we were dealing with Cork Institute of Technology, CIT, the Marine Institute and problems that arose there, I asked about reviews of public private partnerships and the very lengthy periods that are allowed to elapse before they are reviewed and now, at least in one instance but potentially in more than 40 others where there may be difficulties, schoolchildren will have no school to go to in the next few weeks. In terms of value for money, this is a very serious issue. Clearly, a level of oversight, enforcement and inspection took place during the construction of those schools but the problems that have emerged certainly seem to suggest those processes and procedures were defective. Perhaps there are new procedures. We should move quickly to request the people from, I presume, the building unit of the Department of Education and Skills to come before us to give an account of what seem to be clear failings in the system that operated at the time these schools were being constructed.