Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 490: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the plans in place to introduce grant aid for water harvesting in schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14615/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is anxious to enable schools to conserve water and keep their bills as low as possible. An information package is currently being prepared for schools on the most appropriate measures to minimise excess consumption of water and to reduce wastage where it exists. As part of this exercise, technical guidance and specifications for the most common problems that are likely to arise in this area will be provided.

Rainwater harvesting systems have real potential to reduce schools future water bills in conjunction with other technologies. The demand for water in schools must be minimised firstly through push type spray taps, low flushing toilets, urinal controls, repairing leaks, etc, then the potential for rainwater harvesting can be maximised by reducing the amount of mains water used to flush toilets. (Typically this would be about two thirds of the water used in a school).

In that context my Department has selected Stamullen National School, Co Meath where a new 16 classroom GRD school is under construction to trial a rainwater harvesting system and are reviewing the suitability of other potential locations currently at early construction stage for such systems. While fitting the systems in new schools during construction is relatively straight forward, retrofitting them in existing schools is much more difficult and very expensive because of the various dedicated pipe work systems and the amount of builders work and making good that would be required in each instance.

In November 2007 the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr. John Gormley TD, through Dublin City Council, launched a "Conserve Water in Schools' campaign which involved giving all schools in Dublin City a present of a water butt to collect rain water for use in school gardens and free "hippo bags" to put in toilet cisterns that will automatically reduce the amount of water used with each flush. A "Conserve Water in Schools Resource Pack" was launched which shows children how they can get involved in conserving water and put a stop to water wastage in their schools. The school pack shows children how to audit the amount of water used in their school and how to devise a plan of action to reduce water usage and to stop wastage. Action sheets in the pack encourage pupils to keep up their good water conservation habits and show them how to monitor and evaluate their own school's Plan of Action on an ongoing basis. All schools everywhere can get involved by downloading the schools' pack from the council's website, www.dublincity.ie.