Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

I am pleased that the Minister is to announce more capital projects. He normally does this every February. Will he radically increase the number of announcements this year? The real problem we have had is that we do not get the schools through the planning, tendering and construction stages as quickly as we should. Some of that is down to the tendering process employed since 2008 in the Department of Finance. The big problem last year was that the Minister did not make enough announcements in February 2009. Will he ensure there are more announcements this year? Not all schools will get through to completion stage.

The Minister referred to the fact that €39 million was the rental charge for last year. That was a substantial improvement on the previous year but it is very far ahead of the sums for 2006 and 2007. Some of the money spent last year was in buying out the prefabs in question. Will the Minister agree to make public the findings of the expert group which was appointed by the Minister on foot of considerable parliamentary scrutiny by Deputy Quinn and me during the past 12 months? It would be good to see exactly what the group had to say about the way in which the Department of Education and Science's building unit organises itself.

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