Opposition parties have dismissed the Government's announcement of an additional €11 million earmarked for school refurbishment projects.
Labour's Ms Jan O Sullivan said there should be "more transparency" in the way the Government handles schools building programmes. She added that although the funding announcement was "welcome in so far as it goes", it was "only" €11 million, we "already knew was there.
"One could be forgiven for thinking the timing of the announcement was deliberate," she said. There are a lot of schools "with substandard conditions for whom there was no prospect of good news for this year".
The Government had not provided a breakdown of how much was being spent in each area, or what additional funding if any, had been allocated, Ms Olwyn Enright of Fine Gael said.
A Department spokesperson said this morning a contingency sum "for emergencies" of €11 million had been in place since January. The Minister has a "complete and open structure highlighted" and the process for the school buildings programme was "more open and transparent that it had been before," the spokesman said.
The list of 100 primary and post-primary schools earmarked, published yesterday evening on the Department's website, coincided with huge pressure on the Government over alleged broken promises to schools prior to last year's general election.