Sir, - I refer to the report in The Irish Times (March 14th) under the headline "Grant aid to schools difficult to recover", which reports on the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on March 13th. Unfortunately, this gives a misleading impression of what I said to the committee. In reply to a query about recovery of state capital grant in the event of the private sale of a voluntary secondary school, I indicated that this issue was not quite as simple as it may seem, for the following, reasons.
The sites of secondary schools are provided entirely by the school owners and the department has no lien on the proceeds of the sale of the site. The scheme of capital grants for voluntary secondary schools was introduced in the late 1960s and in many cases a school would not have received any building grants or would have received grants in respect of only a portion of the buildings; and in many cases the buildings, having ceased to be used for school purposes, would have no commercial value.
I pointed out that while there was no specific formula in place in relation to the repayment of grants, there was agreement in principle between the department and the secondary school managerial authorities that the unexpired value of any State capital grants paid would be refunded where the building ceased to be used for educational purposes. - Yours, etc,
Secretary,
Department of Education,
Dublin 1.