Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 274: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the way schools can avail of assistance from his Department to increase energy efficiency; when the research project underway with Sustainable Energy Ireland aimed at helping schools to meet the certification requirements of the energy performance building directive will be rolled out to every school here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27866/08]

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 nine years it 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 of Education and Science has taken a more holistic approach and has developed technical guidance on energy efficiency in school designs as an integral part of the Department's 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 Schools 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 performance of the 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 18 April 2008.

One of the research projects currently underway is developing a project, in conjunction with Sustainable Energy Ireland, aimed at helping existing schools to meet the certification requirements of the Energy Performance Building Directive. This process will allow all schools to conduct an energy audit of their school and energy usage and to input specific information to the Departments energy website. The school will then not only receive information on their actual energy use and environmental emissions but will also be able to compare the schools energy performance relative to that of other school buildings in the form of an energy rating. They will also be able to receive energy saving advice from the website relative to their school buildings and to view case studies of similar schools and how they achieve better energy savings. The data gathering, energy auditing and benchmarking and website development aspects of the project are complete and validation of the system will be completed this year.