Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 133: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills when each classroom in the State will be supplied with a laptop and overhead projector; if she is satisfied that every school has sufficient broadband connection for best use of interactive teaching and learning resources [37138/10]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will be aware, my colleague Minister O'Keeffe distributed €22.3m in capital funding to primary schools last November, with a specific focus on equipping classrooms with digital projectors, teaching computers and wireless mice and keyboards. Schools are asked to prioritise the deployment of these items in each classroom, and have been given access to national purchasing Frameworks to assist them in getting best value for money in their procurement. I intend to build on this investment with further allocations to the post-primary and primary sectors shortly. Schools will continue to be asked to prioritise the deployment of digital projectors and teaching computers in each classroom. As and when each school completes this priority deployment, it is required to use any remaining grant balance on a second tier of priority ICT equipment categories including classroom computers, printers, scanners, networking equipment and so on.

As the Deputy may be aware, the maintenance of ICT equipment inventories for individual schools is a matter for school boards of management themselves. My officials will be reviewing the need and focus for any further investment in this domain in the new year, in light of information to be provided by schools on their grant expenditure.

Currently over 97% of all schools are availing of the Schools Broadband Service. Of the remaining percentage 70 schools have opted out of the scheme and the remaining schools are awaiting installation in the coming months as part of the roll out of new broadband for schools contracts. The priority for the new procurement process was to ensure that the broadband services to schools kept in line with national infrastructure improvements.

Since commencement of the roll out of phase II in 2009 there has already been over a 50% increase in aggregate bandwidth usage, this is due to improved bandwidth speeds being made available to schools and the substantial reduction i.e. over 50% in the number of schools who are connected via satellite. For those schools that remain reliant on satellite, where a wireless or DSL solution becomes available they will be migrated to the improved service as soon as is practicable. In addition my Department in conjunction with the Department of Communications Energy and Natural Resources has connected 78 post primary schools in a pilot project with 100Mbp/s broadband.