Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

There is a very simple problem here. Some 40,000 children go to school in pre-fab buildings, which is not acceptable to anybody. We all understand that a temporary situation can arise in any school which can be met by having a pre-fab for a year or two while an extension is being built or whatever. However, the problem is that many of these pre-fabs are in effect the permanent schools. We do not even know how long many of them have been in place, although from looking at them in our constituencies we realise that quite a number have been there for very long periods of time.

I am asking the Taoiseach to acknowledge to the House, to the children attending such pre-fabs, the teachers who must teach in them and the parents that the situation is not acceptable to him as head of the Government. Now that there is a downturn in housing construction, I ask him to take the opportunity to accelerate the school building programme. All of the schools concerned have made applications over time to the Department of Education and Science for extensions, new schools or whatever replacement class rooms they need.

The problem is that when they contact the Department of Education and Science, the telephone is dead. They cannot get an answer, and the situation has become worse in recent times as, presumably, the Department cuts, pares and does whatever is needed in light of the current public finances. I am simply putting it to the Taoiseach that there is a solution to the problem. There is now spare capacity in construction and why can this not be utilised to accelerate the school building programme? This would do two things simultaneously. It would provide the schools that will have to be built anyway, because at the moment the Government is pouring money down the drain. The State is paying €35 million a year in rent for some of these temporary structures and the schools will have to be provided anyway. We have to build schools for a growing population and so it is as well to do it now.

Second, there is the added advantage of doing it now because it would give a boost to the construction sector and ensure the spare capacity is utilised. Given the state that construction is in, a better deal could be agreed in terms of the cost of constructing these buildings at this stage.

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