Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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327. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will introduce a pilot programme to devolve to the annual capital budget to schools to allow them schools to plan for capital projects; and the reasons for not progressing this proposal further, as per the programme for Government. [3731/16]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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As the Deputy will be aware in more recent years there has been a greater devolution of autonomy for smaller scale projects to individual schools. The autonomy already given to schools to manage small scale capital works should be continued. However, it does not appear feasible to extend to schools autonomy over the management of large scale capital works. Given the limited budget available, the need to prioritise spending, the complexity of major multi-million capital projects, and the limited technical expertise of school boards and the need to adhere to public procurement guidelines, it is not clear whether school boards or principals would have the capacity to engage any further with planning and managing capital projects.

The option of giving schools a capital grant as suggested by the Deputy is not feasible. It would not allow capital spending to be targeted to those schools most in need of capital investment and, in effect, the Government would end up borrowing capital sums that would be held as funds on deposit in many schools where capital expenditure is not required.