Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister must be aware that the lack of capitation is actually destructive of the quality of education and service schools can provide, particularly with regard to insurance. I do not know if the Minister has asked his officials to carry out a study into insurance costs for schools or a study into energy costs for schools but both are particularly onerous. If one takes the kind of schools with which the Minister was commiserating just a while ago, which were promised significant upgrades or rebuilds in 2004, he will know that those schools are likely to be the ones that have had the least amount of retrofitting with regard to energy conservation. In a way, the burden of the failure to improve and restore capitation falls on them. Remember that we have been in a restoration process for many things following the difficult years of the crash. Many schools built 40 or 50 years ago are basically heating the air when they operate their heating systems. Has the Minister asked anybody in his Department to have a look at this in a serious way?

See this speech in context