Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

As the Deputy will be aware, on 12 February 2009, I made an announcement regarding 43 school projects which will receive approval from my Department to proceed to tender with a view to proceeding to construction this year. I also announced that 25 projects would receive approval to start architectural planning, that is, they will receive approval to appoint a design team and begin work on the architectural design of their projects.

The selection of the various projects to go to construction is complex and was undertaken with regard to the availability of funding and the priority of the projects. Priority is established primarily on the basis of the projects' band-rating in accordance with the criteria for prioritising large-scale projects, details of which are published on my Department's website. However, certain other factors are taken into account in the selection of projects. These factors include the stage of progression through the architectural design process, that is, whether the project is technically ready to proceed to tender and construction; whether the project was previously allowed to proceed to tender but did not do so for various reasons; the need to achieve an appropriate balance of capital expenditure on a multi-annual basis between primary and post-primary building projects; the need to ensure that contractual commitments are not entered into in any particular year which might not be capable of being met in future years; the need to ensure adequate funding is available for the purchase of sites for key projects and the need to provide additional school places in rapidly developing areas to meet increasing demand while at the same time balancing this with the need to maintain investment in the improvement of existing school buildings.

All of these factors have to be considered before making a final selection and this work was done over a period of time. The selection of the projects to be included on the list was finalised on 11 February 2009 and a press release issued the following day. As is normal with a process like this, there would have been a number of initial draft lists which would have been subject to amendments prior to being finalised. At the time the Government was considering the capital programme and subsequently decided to allocate additional resources to the school building and modernisation programme. At all times during this process I consulted with, and was advised by, officials in my Department.

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