Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

A typical provincial town with a catchment area in which 30,000 to 40,000 people reside may, for historical reasons, have up to seven or eight primary schools and three or four post-primary schools, including a former VEC technical school and a school created from the amalgamation of two schools run by the Christian Brothers and an order of nuns, respectively, possibly a college of further education and, in some cases, an institute of technology. Institutes of technology are certainly to be found in 14 such towns. We do not know, on a horizontal basis, what exactly we possess. We do not know if the science laboratory in one secondary school is up to scratch or if that in another is decrepit. Each school is an island and they apply individually for support and resources of one kind or another. What I want to do is obtain an inventory of the educational resources in various towns and identify what we can use to ensure maximum efficiency. If there is a good sports hall in one school or if a GAA club has recently received a grant to build such a hall, I want to know if these facilities can be thrown into the mix.

For many reasons, schools have historically dealt directly with the Department. As a result of the fact that the same curriculum is being taught at primary and secondary level and because there is no longer the same kind of institutional or social rivalry among different teaching orders, we now have an opportunity to ensure we obtain proper value from and utilise the physical resource that exists. However, we must first measure the extent of that resource. That is what the inventory is doing but it is not confined to a particular type of town or to new or expanding areas. In some instances there is probably greater capacity for better utilisation in what might be termed a "stable" town.

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