John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 424: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if there are supports available either from his Department or any other Departments to support wind energy programmes in schools that would complement environmental works that are taking place under green flag initiatives; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17635/08]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has a strong record in developing low energy educational buildings. For the past eight years my Department has been using a process called the DART approach to develop sustainable and energy efficiency in educational buildings. This acronym focuses on four key areas, namely; Design, Awareness, Research, and Technology. Rather than develop a unique focus on energy design the Department have taken a more holistic approach and have developed our technical guidance on energy efficiency in school designs as an integral part of the suite of technical guidance documents.

These guidelines encourage the design team to take a complete design team approach from project conception. There is particular emphasis on elimination of over design, improved thermal envelope design and improved passive solar design, natural ventilation and day lighting along with advanced heating and lighting controls. It has been demonstrated that all Primary School's designed and built in line with the above policy and the technical guidance documents can have an energy performance that is 2.3 times more efficient than International best practice.

The application of wind energy schemes in schools has been explored by my Department and the results indicate that given the scale of application to match demand and capacity in a meaningful way schools are better placed to connect to one of the main wind energy electrical suppliers to maximise the potential of green electricity. This is kept under review given improvements in technology and the market place. The performance of my Department in the area of low energy design has been recognised at both National and International level with sustainable energy awards for excellence in Design and Specification and just recently by the Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Awards held in Dublin Castle Conference Centre on Friday, 18th April 2008.