Joe O'Toole (Independent)

In recent months, 13 Members have, on different occasions, raised issues to do with the schools building programme and related matters. I note that Senator Doherty will raise this matter on the Adjournment today. Some of those who have spoken on this issue were Government Members, including Senators Cannon and Ó Domhnaill. Members on this side of the House have described similar problems in schools throughout the State. The responses we receive to these queries are exactly the same in all cases, being merely a restatement of what the school authorities already know. The entire process is a model of procrastination. It seems a structure has been established to prevent us obtaining information on where schools stand on the priority list. That is not good enough.

This issue should be dealt with by the Committee of Public Accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General. I call for a value for money audit not of the money being spent but of the process that schools must go through in dealing with the Department when they seek an extension, additional classroom or new school. What is going on would not be tolerated in any other structure in the public or private sector. My office has kept a record of our dealings with the Department on these matters. On several occasions, we rang the school buildings section of the Department only to be told we must address our inquiry to the Minister's office. When we do so, however, we are told we should be speaking to the buildings section. When we tell the official in the Minister's office that the buildings office has directed us there, our call is redirected to the person in the buildings section to whom we spoke ten minutes earlier. This is the repeated pattern of our attempts to obtain information.

School authorities are informed of their entitlements and put on a list, but the list changes without any information being conveyed to the schools in question. Attempts to obtain information represent an appalling waste of time and effort. Ordinary people in communities are being given the run-around by the Department, as are Members on all sides of the House. The priority list must provide a clear indication of where schools stand and allow them to see when their position changes. Moreover, reasons must be given when one school is gazumped by another.

I do not want the Minister to come to the House only to deliver a long, confusing speech that leaves us less informed than we were before. This issue must be dealt with at a higher level. I do not issue an idle threat in signalling my intention to follow through on this. I will write to the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee of Public Accounts if I do not receive a response on this. There must be a quality audit of procedures in the buildings section of the Department of Education and Science. The current situation is simply not good enough.

Some seven or eight years ago, when the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, was being reformed, I met various farming groups, including a group of farmers from County Wexford who were considering the possibility of building wind turbines as a type of add-on value to their farming activities. They had already selected suitable locations for the construction of these turbines. I was amazed to discover this morning that a group of ten of those farmers are, almost a decade later and with the full approval of their local community, still seeking approval to build a medium-scale wind site. This makes no sense. Moreover, it is not good enough that they are being offered only 5 cent per unit of electricity generated. I call for a debate on this issue to discover the reasons for the delay in this case.