Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 231: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the full implications of her recent indication to the effect that school boards of management were legally accountable for matters appertaining to the running of operations and incidents that may take place on the school premises; if this refers to all health and safety features arising from overcrowding where such overcrowding is caused by failure of her Department to provide the necessary funds to alleviate overcrowding; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12186/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Individual school authorities are responsible in the first instance for health and safety issues at schools and it is the responsibility of school management authorities to have a safety statement in place in their schools. Schools are obliged to identify possible hazards, assess the risks to health and safety and to put appropriate safeguards in place to mitigate the potential risk to the school community.

It is open to any school to apply to my Department for additional accommodation to meet its needs. All applications for capital funding are assessed in accordance with the Department's published prioritisation criteria for large scale building projects which were drawn up following consultation with the education partners. Following this assessment, each application is assigned a band rating. Progress on individual projects is consistent with that band rating.

It is also open to school management, where an immediate need for additional accommodation exists, to apply for the provision of temporary rented accommodation while awaiting the provision of permanent accommodation. Provision is built into the School Building and modernisation Programme to enable schools address urgent health and safety problems. In this regard, primary schools are given an annual allocation under the grant scheme for minor works which can be used entirely at the discretion of school management to address basic health and safety issues relating to school infrastructure.

My Department has invested in a record school building programme which between 2000 and 2006 involved the delivery of over 7,800 projects with an investment of €2.6 billion. The budget for 2007, at over €540m, is the first year of the roll-out of the new NDP which will involve an investment of over €4.5 billion in school buildings over the next 7 years. This multi-annual funding will enable my Department to continue to take a proactive approach to the provision of modern school accommodation having particular regard to the needs of developing areas.