Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I thank Senator O'Donovan for generously sharing his time with me on the issue of Summercove national school and I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I support this call because I do not think it is economically viable to spend money renting prefabricated buildings which will never be permanent educational infrastructure. There are probably instances in the Minister of State's constituency. I raised this at a broader level earlier. Senator O'Donovan point is well made. We spend a great deal of money renting prefabricated buildings. They are not classrooms, never will be and never were intended to be. However a custom has developed through practice whereby they formulate an extensive percentage of the school property portfolio. Perhaps it is the case that the accommodation group in the Department of Education and Science can no longer deal sufficiently well with this. I have very little faith in that section of the Department and we need to create a new body to deliver this type of infrastructure. The Department must produce the necessary educational infrastructure, in this case a new school for Summercove.

I pay tribute to the school principal, Ms Kathleen Lane, and the teachers and staff who have to work in very difficult circumstances. The pupils are at the heart of this issue.

Senator O'Donovan and I, along with other candidates, attended a very well-organised meeting at the Carlton Hotel in Kinsale prior to the general election, and we all gave firm commitments that in whatever capacity we emerged after the election we would pursue this issue politically irrespective of who was in Government. The downturn in construction provides a double benefit, the obvious one being the delivery of a much needed school for the area and the other being the stimulation of the local economy by taking people off social welfare and putting them back into the workforce where they contribute to the Exchequer as taxpayers, which also leads to a social welfare saving. Every job lost in construction or any related area costs the Exchequer €20,000. While this is beyond economics and is more important than that, if one were to take that narrow viewpoint, the economic saving for the State is self-explanatory. I urge the Minister of State, in so far as he can, to deliver a favourable response.