Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The cost of the schools can really only be ascertained over the long term. The chances are that the schools now built under PPP would not yet have been built otherwise, meaning the costs would have gone up in the meantime. There is no doubt that they are state-of-the-art schools with superb facilities, but were we to start building them now, which is probably about right, they would cost us a great deal more. As I said, the benefits can be seen over the longer term. Learning from the PPP process happening in the UK was behind these pilot projects. They were a learning experience, and we learned from building those schools, using that experience in building the National Maritime College in Cork, which has now become the benchmark for PPP procurement. We have already gained from the expertise of building the schools, and that experience will now feed into our ongoing PPP programme.

Access to the schools is very good. I believe that they were offered 320 hours outside the normal school day for community use, adult education, sports facilities that could be rented out to local groups and for parent-teacher meetings and other activities that would go on in the school. I have not heard anyone say that it was not sufficient for them. Part of the contract for the maintenance is that lighting and heating must be available every day. I understand that quite good use is being made of them, in particular, Ballincollig has a superb adult education centre run through the school using all the facilities of the school after normal hours.

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