Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

This compares with 10.8% in 2003. Suggestions often made that spending on prefabs has grown dramatically in recent years are misleading. It should be also noted that temporary accommodation is not limited to prefabs and can also involve the rental of high quality buildings. I assure Senators that the Government is determined to keep expenditure on prefabs as low as possible. The database of temporary accommodation is currently being finalised and will obviously inform the Department's future decision-making in this area.

The motion before the House today also refers to value for money. Key initiatives in this area include the production of generic repeat designs to reduce costs and the use of the design and build model to transfer more risk to contractors. As well as improving value for money, both of these developments have also helped us to deliver projects much faster. The tendering of all school building projects on a fixed price basis also underpins the requirement to achieve value for money and the new forms of Government contracts will further assist in this. The Department has also adopted a policy of devolving much greater authority to local school management boards to manage and deliver smaller building projects, thereby freeing my Department to concentrate on the larger scale projects and, again, to achieve value for money.

Senators may be also interested to know that we have prioritised energy efficiency in the interests both of the environment and of reducing schools' running costs. This has proven quite successful with modern-day schools typically using three times less energy than schools built ten years ago and using less than half the energy than what is termed as good international practice for schools.

In respect of school planning, in recent years my Department has developed much closer working relations generally with local authorities, particularly in rapidly developing areas. Last year, I met the county managers for Fingal, Meath, Kildare and Westmeath to follow up on communications between officials on school planning needs for 2008 and beyond. The motion proposes that the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006 be used for advancing future school building projects. I assure the Senators that I am very anxious to improve the procedures both for acquiring sites for schools and for securing the necessary planning permissions in a timely manner. I have met the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to discuss how the programme for Government commitments in respect of these matters can be progressed and a range of options are currently being explored. We are also examining how the whole process of planning for schools can be improved with a view to ensuring large-scale residential developments are not approved by local authorities without adequate provision for schools.