Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I want the Taoiseach to picture a primary school. Looking at a primary school in this country today, the first thing that would strike him is the number of prefabs. There is a clutter of prefabs in school yards, as well as prefab extensions. Sometimes the entire school is a prefab. The Labour Party spokesperson on education, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, had been asking the previous Minister for the past six months how many prefab buildings there are in primary schools. She had been telling him that the information was not available in her Department. However, the Minister for Education, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, recently wrote to Deputy Quinn and told him that there are 2,235 pre-fabs in more than 800 primary schools throughout the country. Some 1,372 of those are being used for mainstream classes, 552 as resource rooms and 72 for special needs education. There are 40,000 primary school children attending classes in pre-fab buildings, which are hard to heat in winter and very difficult to keep cool at this time of the year. They are certainly not suitable on a long-term basis.

Does the Taoiseach believe it is acceptable that 40,000 children should have to go school in pre-fab buildings? Is that good enough after ten or 11 years of the best economic performance this country has ever had?

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