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

This is something on which we are working. As the Deputy knows, I represent Dublin West, which is a rapidly growing area, as is the Deputy’s constituency now as well. There has been a big increase in population, and we have a huge school building programme across the country at the moment at primary and second level. There is a pipeline, and sometimes it moves very well and sometimes it slows down. It is a bit slow at the moment. The Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Foley, are working very closely on how we can move some of those projects along and speed up that pipeline because it is very much needed. As people will see from the expenditure figures released today, however, spending this year so far by Government is 20% higher than it was last year. We are ahead of profile in terms of spending so far this year. It is not, therefore, the case that the Government is not spending money. We are, and we need to have regard to that too because we are now increasing spending at a rate much faster than the economy is growing and well above the rate of inflation. We just need to not forget about the mistakes of the past too.

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