€1.5bn spend to prioritise new schools
March 12, 2012
The Government will today outline plans for dozens of new schools as part of a €1.5bn construction programme.
But a dwindling capital budget and rising birthrates in larger cities and towns mean the bulk of Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s school building fund up to 2016 will focus on new schools and extensions, rather than upgrades of sub-standard buildings.
The 2012 school building programme announced before Christmas was for a €430m spend, down from €500m last year and almost €580m in 2010.
Cork TDs have welcomed the plans. Ciarán Lynch, Labour TD for Cork South Central, hailed the plan, said: “This is a statement of massive investment in education for the Cork region. It also plans for the future to ensure that newer communities built in recent years will have schools built locally.”
West Cork’s Fine Gael TD, Jim Daly, said the announcement meant construction could begin in long-overdue projects in Kinsale, Clonakilty and Skibbereen, where three secondary schools will be amalgamated in to one new building on a greenfield site in 2015.
“This confirmation from the minister gives a degree of certainty to the schools involved and allow them to concentrate on the day-to-day task of teaching and learning,” said Mr Daly.
The emphasis is on communities where most of the 100,000 additional pupils will be attending school, with 80,000 of those places to be provided in start-up schools and the rest through extensions.
Mr Quinn announced last June that 40 schools — 20 primary and 20 secondary — will be needed by 2017, 29 of them in Dublin and surrounding counties, six in Cork, three in Galway and one each in counties Cavan and Wexford.
The five-year plan should give a transparent picture of the projects which are being prioritised for funding, although it is unclear at this stage if Mr Quinn’s department will provide projected timescales for work to begin on each project. Such a system operated on the Department of Education website during Noel Dempsey’s term almost a decade ago, although delays in acquiring sites and securing planning permission can make it difficult to accurately assess delivery of school building works.
An estimated €5m a year will be saved in a plan unveiled last week to allow schools build classrooms instead of renting prefabs.
Mr Quinn said seven primary schools to open this year and in 2013 will be under the patronage of Educate Together, four will have the local VEC as their patrons, and An Foras Pátrúnachta will be patron to two. No churches sought patronage of any of the new primary schools.
IRISH EXAMINER