Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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Question 72: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she has details of the number of primary schools using prefab classrooms in a format that provides readily accessible cumulative information on the overall position in order to facilitate efficient and cost-effective management; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13185/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will be aware from previous replies over the past few weeks, the position is that while comprehensive information is held on individual school files, the Department does not yet have these details available in a format that provides readily accessible cumulative information on the overall position regarding temporary accommodation. However, this issue is being addressed as a matter of urgency and work on compiling a comprehensive database of such information is well advanced. This work is part of a general review of rental policy being undertaken. Information is being collated on approximately 900 schools which have received approval from the Department for temporary accommodation, including but not limited to prefabs. This will be used to produce a database of information which will be maintained on an ongoing basis. I will ensure the Deputy receives the information sought once it is available. I anticipate this work will be completed shortly.

The Deputy will be aware that demand for additional accommodation in schools has risen significantly over the last number of years, with the appointment of 6,000 extra teachers in the primary sector alone since 2002. In considering the need to provide extra resource and other teachers to schools in recent years, the Government could have decided to make children wait until permanent accommodation could be provided. However, we prioritised putting the extra teachers into schools as soon as possible.

Against this background, my Department has nonetheless managed to keep expenditure on temporary accommodation low. It should be noted that the amount spent on rental accommodation was still only 5.5% of the total investment in school buildings in 2007. Even when the rental and purchase of temporary accommodation is taken together, it still only comes to 6.2% of overall investment in school buildings last year. This compares with 10.8% in 2003. Suggestions that spending on prefabs has grown dramatically in recent years are therefore quite misleading.

It should also be noted that temporary accommodation is not limited to prefabs and can also involve the rental of high quality buildings. I share the Deputy's concern that expenditure on prefabs be kept as low as possible and I assure him that this is the case. The database of temporary accommodation that is currently being finalised will inform my Department's future decision-making in this area.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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It is probably about six to seven weeks since I first asked this question. The Minister is either being economic with the truth, to borrow a phrase from a famous trial in the southern hemisphere, or her Department is being economic with the truth with her. She will have to satisfy herself as to which of those allegations is more accurate. It is beyond belief, after three years plus in the Department, that she has no overall view of the physical inventory of the primary school infrastructure. Any other organisation that had a chief executive — she is the chief executive of a Department — faced with a growing increase in numbers of pupils in need of physical accommodation would be able to say in spring 2008 how many primary pupils are in prefabs. She cannot say what is the age of those prefabs. She cannot say what is the cost of those prefabs. She cannot say when permanent accommodation, as in her reply to the previous question, will be put in place. Instead she will waste money on new prefabs when the parents and everybody else in that school outside Mallow, albeit with 70 odd pupils, want a permanent building. Is it any wonder her Department is rated as the most incompetent and dysfunctional of the primary major Departments? Will she agree she has presided over that for the past three to four years? Her reply is an absolute disgrace. I will continue to put down the question. No managing director of a sweet shop would survive the length of time in office that she has survived if he or she did not know what was the stock on the shelves. She does not have a clue what is the school accommodation of the primary pupils. She is a disgrace or, more to the point, her Department is a disgrace.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for his kind comments. I thought he was quite a good Minister for Finance. Those who manage my Department, the Secretary General and the senior management group, are highly efficient, highly committed, dedicated people, who give all their time to managing a budget of €9.3 billion. They oversee a system of 4,000 schools, seven universities, up to 20 higher education institutions and look after the interests of individuals from the age of three right through to adulthood. We look after youth groups, adult literacy groups, people who are within formal systems and people who are outside of formal systems. The only person who has accused the Department of Education and Science in the manner in which Deputy Quinn has done here today is Deputy Quinn.

It is most unfair to say that to a Department which runs an education system that is very efficient. Not only that, it does it in the spirit of partnership with patron bodies, management and unions — always with the interests of the students at heart. When one is trying to manage a budget of that amount where there are 4,000 boards of management, of course it presents challenges for them and for the Department. It works extremely efficiently.

We recognise that quite a number of demands have been made on the Department in recent years because of the growing population and the very positive Government policies that have ensured extra teachers have been put in place where needed without waiting for the permanent accommodation. It would have been very easy for me, two or three years ago, to decide, even though I wanted children who were slow learners and had special educational needs to have immediate access to a teacher, to wait until there was a place to put that teacher. We did not do that, we put in the teachers and that created the demand for extra temporary accommodation. We gave it at the time because the children came first and the buildings came second. I will stand over that policy any time.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Minister——

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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We have written to 900 schools that have received sanction from us and we have received replies from most of them. As soon as the information is available I will give it to the Deputy. There are schools which are set up that do not get immediate permanent recognition. We will not put those in a permanent building if they do not have permanent recognition. There are schools that need temporary accommodation and they get it. There are schools that need accommodation immediately and they get it, because of whatever pressure is on them. We have to be flexible enough as a Department to be able to do that.

We are also taking on board the suggestions, ideas and comments made by the Comptroller and Auditor General regarding the purchase of temporary accommodation as opposed to its rental and the policy of having an inventory. That is exactly what we are doing.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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Go raibh maith agat a Aire.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I will stand over and compliment the senior management group of my Department on the work they do in managing a system in the manner in which it exists, which serves the children of this country very well.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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May I ask a supplementary question?

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I am afraid not, we are three minutes over time. I allowed the Minister some leeway in terms of her response.