Ivor Callely (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

I am glad the Senator has given me the opportunity to outline the current position of the Department of Education and Science on the proposed major building project at Brierfield national school, Ballinasloe, County Galway. The current position is that the large-scale building project for the school is listed in section 7 of the 2003 schools building programme which the Minister for Education and Science published on the Department's website, www.education.ie. The project is at an early stage of architectural planning and has been assigned a band 3 rating by the Department in accordance with the published criteria for prioritising large-scale projects. However, primary school projects listed in sections 6 and 7 are not being authorised to progress beyond their current stage of architectural planning for the time being. The timing of when such projects can progress to tender and construction will depend on the budgetary allocation for 2004 and subsequent years, as well as the priority afforded to each project by reference to the band rating.

The position on the pilot initiative referred to by the Senator is that 20 primary schools were invited to participate in the pilot phase of the initiative. The Department chose the 20 schools following detailed assessment and the initiative will be reviewed at the end of 2003 with a view to its expansion, subject to available funding, to other small primary schools in 2004.

Given the Senator's special interest in Brierfield national school and developing educational facilities, I invite him to work with the office of the Minister in the latter part of this year and into 2004 to see what can be done. In the intervening time individual schools should use their devolved grants to deal with any urgent health and safety works. I thank the Senator for giving me this opportunity to outline the current position.

The Seanad adjourned at 8.55 p.m. until 10.30a.m. on Thursday, 19 June 2003.