Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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Question 874: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the assistance available from her Department to replace and upgrade school computers and software in a primary school in a disadvantaged area; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14982/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The major focus for my Department under the ICT in schools programme at present is the roll-out of broadband connectivity to all recognised schools. This project is being undertaken in partnership with industry, following the establishment of a three-year €18 million joint Government-IBEC-TIF, Telecommunications and Internet Federation, Fund to fund local connectivity at school level. The broadband connectivity is being provided via a schools national broadband network supported by HEAnet, in order to provide managed Internet access, e-mail, security controls and content filtering. A broadband support service is being managed by the National Centre for Technology in Education, NCTE, to assist schools with advice and information relating to the roll-out and ongoing use of their broadband connectivity within the schools network. The overall costs of the schools broadband access programme, including the initial set-up and ongoing costs over the three years, are in the region of €30 million.

The schools broadband access programme builds on the investment by my Department in grant-aiding schools to develop their internal networks. Since December 2004, more than 3,700 schools have received grants to develop their networking facilities at a cost of €20 million. The development of internal networking facilities in schools is critical to supporting schools' full exploitation of the potential offered by broadband connectivity and the efficient use of computer software.

High quality digital content is essential to ensuring effective use of ICT in the classroom. In this context, the Scoilnet portal has been developed to provide a focal point of reference and a resource for teachers, students and parents. This portal site provides significant amounts of curriculum-relevant content linking to over 6,000 websites, the content of which is aligned directly to curricular and subject areas. The NCTE is working with the European Schoolnet, EUN, to implement a technological infrastructure to allow Irish schools to share access to a wide range of on-line educational databases located around Europe. An important aspect of this process is the development of an application profile for Irish curricular content to facilitate meta-tagging of content to international standards. The NCTE is collaborating with the NCCA in this regard. The NCTE is also currently considering the acquisition of a range of on-line reference libraries.

My Department is currently examining the future priorities for the ICT in schools programme. This work is being complemented by a census of ICT infrastructure which was undertaken by the NCTE and is currently being finalised and by an evaluation of the impact of ICT on teaching and learning which my Department's inspectorate is currently conducting.