Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Question 92: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if the discontinuation of the school buildings list has removed transparency from the school buildings programme resulting in many schools being left in the dark without any information on the stage their project is at. [13258/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Following the introduction by the Department of Finance in 2004 of five year funding envelopes I decided that my Department's system of publishing the entire building programme in one single announcement was less than satisfactory. This was based on the experience in 2004, whereby a record number of projects were selected for proceeding to tender and construction at a single point in time. While ideal in the context of announcing the entire building programme in one annual announcement, this made it less easy to take account of emerging trends generally and specific issues arising on individual projects.

I was anxious to ensure that there was a continuous flow of projects moving to tender and construction. The approach I adopted means that there is a solid flow of projects moving forward through the various stages of architectural planning that can be sustained into the future and the previous stop/start approach to planning the building programme can be avoided. It also gives my Department some flexibility in addressing urgent accommodation issues arising in rapidly developing areas.

Accordingly the 2005 building programme provided for projects to be approved to go to tender and construction on a rolling basis during the year when the schools concerned and their design teams were in a position to confirm to my Department that the project had advanced to the point where tenders could be sought. This approach has been continued since then and I make regular announcements on the matter so that schools will be aware of the progression of their projects.

My latest announcement was on 1 February last when I announced a list of 48 large scale building projects, including 45 new school buildings, which are due to go to construction in 2008. It is also my intention to make further announcements of projects to be progressed as the 2008 school building programme is rolled out and to update progress on the new schools planned for September 2008 delivery in developing areas.