Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I wish to thank all the Deputies who have contributed to this debate. In particular, I pay tribute to my colleague, Deputy Quinn, for tabling the motion and presenting the Labour Party's case on this issue. As I listened to the debate, I was thinking about a primary school in County Cork that I visited some weeks before the budget. It is a school of 245 pupils, all of them accommodated in prefab buildings because there is no permanent school building. They have been knocked off the school building programme. They have a site and have had architects and engineers there, but no money from the Department of Education and Science. They explained to me that if they could only get a loan, the repayments would be less than what the Department is paying in rent for the prefab buildings.

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