Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

That is a critical point. We are not talking about something that will not have a return. The return will be 100-fold. An educated young people is the engine that will drive economic progress and make us adaptable to the changing economic environment.

I was heartened to hear the Minister say he is prepared to concede the idea of putting the order of school building projects on the Internet. That is welcome but I challenge the Minister's statement that there are objective criteria. We have sufficient anecdotal evidence and evidence in local media to indicate that during elections communities are given the impression they will get a new school but it does not happen. The Minister should go a stage further and remove the allocation of schools from the political process by putting in place discernible, simple, objective criteria and putting that on the web. That would take politics out of this area. The Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, is to be congratulated on his activities in this area in the past.

As stated in Senator Healy Eames's motion, we must acknowledge that we have a crisis in the school building area. There was a good deal of investment in teaching personnel in recent years, and rightly so, including resource teachers and so on, but that was to the detriment of a schools building programme. We currently have many derelict school buildings and a proliferation of prefabs on grounds, removing playing areas and creating bad conditions, and a lack of adequate school buildings throughout the country.

It is not an exaggeration to say there is a crisis in school building and that crisis must be addressed in an imaginative way but some issues must borne in mind in that regard. The cost of prefabs is astronomical. The cost of maintaining an unemployed building worker on the dole on unemployment assistance or, as we call it now, jobseeker's allowance, is hugely expensive also. The potential of money spent on school buildings and materials by builders going back into the economy is enormous. If we were to employ our tragically unemployed, or potentially unemployed, building workers on school building projects throughout the country, the net cost would be low when matters like VAT returns, the reduced cost of social welfare and the non-existent cost of prefabs in such a scenario are factored in. If grants were given to local communities under devolved schemes, it would be easier to source local builders under such ventures. Good value for money would be secured in such circumstances. I do not doubt that at a time of unemployment among building workers and depression in the construction sector as a whole, my proposal represents an opportunity to tackle the school building issue in a coherent national way. I am not sure the Minister has given us sufficient confidence to believe that will happen.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Haughey, to ensure this becomes a priority for the Government. The crisis in school buildings is matched by the crisis in the construction sector. If we think outside the box by marrying the two crises imaginatively, in a way that ensures construction workers can benefit from locally devolved grants when building new school facilities, we will save money. I suggest that when the cost of not doing this is calculated, it will turn out to be more or less cost-neutral. I thank God that our children leave exquisite and beautiful homes each morning. If they go from that to a cramped and inadequate school environment, however, the contradiction will be too much for them to be able to learn effectively. It was more tolerable in the olden days, when children went from primitive housing conditions to primitive school buildings. One cannot synchronise the two in a modern context.