Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important issue and a matter of enormous concern to the six schools affected. The schools are located at four sites in Wicklow, Wexford, Meath and Carlow. They are all replacement schools. The existing schools are still available but we want people to be able to move into the new facilities as soon as possible. It will take a couple of weeks to sort this out. We will sort it out. We are in strong position. The schools are 90% complete. The State owns the buildings and the payments made so far by the State to the PPP contractor are of the order of €4 million to €5 million. It costs much more than that to build one school, let alone six, so we are in a strong position to have this sorted out but because of the collapse of one of the partners it will take a few weeks to conclude matters. Even if this was not a PPP, a similar situation could just as easily have arisen with a traditional construction contract where a contractor or private company building a school or any building could go bust and enter into liquidation. We are confident that we will have this sorted out within a few weeks. The NDFA and the Department of Education and Skills are very engaged in respect of this matter.

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