Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe today denied criticism that some of the school building projects announced yesterday had been previously on a building list over a decade ago.
Mr O’Keeffe said his announcement that up to 52 schools will receive funding to go to tender and construction this year was announced for the first time yesterday.
The Government plans to spend €579 million on the school-building programme this year, creating 23,500 places in 20 new schools and 32 extensions, Mr O’Keeffe said.
Of these, 25 projects have planning permission and will move to tender and construction shortly. Twenty-seven have not yet secured planning permission but have been authorised to prepare tender documentation and will go to tender and construction either later this year or early next year.
Incoming INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan said while it was good news for the 52 schools on the list it is a disappointing for the hundreds that didn’t make it.
Ms Nunan said over 1200 schools need major investment and while the €579 million “sounds impressive” if you “dig down” into the figure very few are going to go on to construction.
She said: “The ones that are not on the list simply want to know will the Minister make a very clear and transparent list available to the public so schools can understand, because they all would have been struggling and battling to get on the list”.
Mr O’Keeffe the Government has been “outstanding” in terms of providing funding for infrastructure and education.
And while he recognised the need for more school building projects he said there’s “a finite amount of money that can be made available at any one time”.
“We in a difficult financial situation, we’re making more money available for school building programmes than we have before,” he said.