Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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32. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the progress of the schools major capital works plan. [1899/17]

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I am looking for a general update on the schools capital programme. A schools capital programme was announced in 2015 with huge fanfare. That fanfare was not the Minister's fault but it only returns capital spending to pre-2011 levels by 2019 so we have a good bit to go. What also concerns me is the cost of projects. While this had gone down during the recession, it seems that it is going up. What, if anything, can be done about this?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased to advise the Deputy that my Department's capital programme continues to address the challenge posed by a rapidly increasing school population. To meet this demographic challenge, my Department's six-year construction programme for 2016-21 details 310 school projects that are being progressed through the architectural planning process towards tender and construction. The programme will fund the construction of over 62,000 additional school places as well as the completion of large-scale projects that were contained in my Department's five-year plan from 2012 to 2016. I also wish to advise the Deputy that in the four-year period from 2012 to 2016, 178 large-scale projects contained in the programmes were completed, including 50 school projects in 2016. These projects provided 52,062 additional permanent school places and 14,951 replacement school places.

Of the total capital expenditure of €530 million expended on the school building programme in 2016, almost 80% of the expenditure was on the delivery of permanent school places. On 1 January 2017, there were 67 major projects under construction. In addition, there are a further 35 school projects that are expected to proceed to construction in the course of the year. This represents a total of 102 major projects either under construction or progressing to commence construction in 2017.

As the Deputy will appreciate, the success of the schools building programme is predicated on the need to ensure that at any given time, there are sufficient number of school projects available to proceed to construction. If this is not the case, there is the risk that capital monies made available for the purpose of accommodating children at primary and post-primary level cannot be spent and that the State cannot provide for school buildings at maximum capacity. Given that any number of issues can arise at any stage up to construction stage in the process of building schools, it is essential that other projects can be progressed if individual projects are delayed for whatever reason. This can also however have the contrary result that there may be more school projects available to proceed to construction than the available budgetary position will allow.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

The action plan for education sets out the Government ambitions for the education system, including the commitment contained in the programme for Government, towards the prioritisation of school educational infrastructure.

My Department will fully engage with the mid-term capital review to be conducted by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform over the coming months. In doing so, my Department will be stressing the increasing costs of providing permanent school accommodation and the opportunities which the school building programme presents for productive capital expenditure in this much needed area of the economy.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I acknowledge that school building is taking place. I suppose it is a long time since the Department was not building schools in some part of the country. My children's school is the subject of major capital works and we are very pleased about that. However, building has stalled in the case of some schools for reasons that are unfathomable in many cases and this is wrong. What happens is that the Minister publishes a list, local announcements are made by Government politicians, everyone is delighted and then there is radio silence and nobody knows what is going on. That is partly the Department's fault. It might be the school's fault in some cases because some people might know what is going on or there is a problem that is not the Department's fault, but nobody knows that publicly enough. Whitecross National School in Julianstown in County Meath has been sitting on a list for the best part of ten years. As recently as two or three years ago, it was promised that it would be built. I understand the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, responded to a Commencement Matter on the issue in the Seanad recently.

It is just not fair. The parents simply do not know what is happening. While it is not entirely the Department's fault, St. Peter's Church of Ireland school in Dunboyne has just been left hanging there for some time. We want to see real action. I acknowledge there has been some progress. In general the Minister will need to fight to frontload some of this spending in the next year or so. The need is there now and the Minister needs to look for alternative funding sources.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I will give an overview of the additional places. In 2012 just over 3,000 additional places were provided. In 2013 it moved up to 8,000 and for last year it was over 15,000. Therefore, we are steadily increasing the number of schools we are building and places we are providing - that is through new builds. The same is true when it comes to replacing other schools.

I agree we could always use more money. Some 80% of the money is now pre-empted by investment in new capacity. We will be approaching the mid-term capital review that is being conducted by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with a view to making the case that this is a very high priority area for investment. I am sure other colleagues will be making cases in respect of their capital programmes.

There are numerous sources for the delays, which are frustrating. There have been planning and design delays. There are numerous areas where the system can run into delays. We are spending every penny that is assigned and we are building even more places every year. Last year between the two it was over 20,000 places. We expect something similar this year and that will continue to be the pattern for the coming years.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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Is the rising cost in the building sector in general a concern to the Minister? Does he need to alert his Government colleagues about that in terms of funding? Will it impact on the number of schools to be built? Will schools that are on the list not get built because other projects have cost too much? One school in particular was advised by officials that the money had run out on another project and so its one could not be built. This is the type of talk that goes around, but it is based on reality.

Could the Government use the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the Junker plan, to access funding for school building? I am thinking of it as an alternative source of funding because we need more buildings than the budget currently allows for.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am open to considering any possibilities in the PPP area, Junker funding or elsewhere. As the Deputy knows, the European Investment Bank opened a Dublin office for the first time and there are opportunities to look at funding in education as an area where that could be delivered.

The Deputy is right in saying that costs have risen. When we started to tender in the depths of the recession, costs were very competitive and they are becoming more expensive. We have had to factor that into our planning process. We are using up-to-date costs and we are very careful - sometimes to the frustration of schools - to get value for money on projects coming in.