Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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232. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if all publicly funded schools here will be able to monitor and report on their energy usage and reductions from January 2015 as legally required in accordance with Statutory Instrument 542 of 2009; the savings in energy use and in spending on energy as a percentage of capitation funding her Department has targeted from all schools for 2015 and 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32411/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) and the Sustainable Authority of Ireland (SEAI) have responsibility to collate all energy consumption data for the public sector in line with Statutory Instrument 542 of 2009. SEAI and the DCENR have developed an online energy monitoring & reporting (M&R) system to satisfy the reporting requirements of both S.I. 542 of 2009 and the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan.

An online Monitoring and Reporting system is being developed and tested at present so public bodies, including schools, can report their energy consumption for all fuel types (e.g. electricity, gas, and oil). Testing and pilot project with schools has been completed in 2014.

To ensure the process is as simple and concise as possible SEAI will: Invite feedback on the monitoring and reporting system from organisations in the education sector; Roll-out to all schools will commence in January 2015. As well as enabling schools to report and track their energy data annually, the system will generate, for each school, its own a scorecard that will present a powerful snapshot of both the school's progress to date and its performance compared to its peers. It will be a powerful tool for tracking, benchmarking and improving energy performance and will assist schools in targeting energy savings. The savings which each school will make will depend on factors specific to the school including the level of expenditure on energy which will vary from school to school. It is not possible, at this time, to express such savings as a percentage of the capitation funding which will be available to schools in 2015 and 2016.