Iarrfaidh mé anois ar cheannaire Phairtí an Lucht Oibre, an Teachta Eamon Gilmore, a cheist a chur.

I want the Taoiseach to picture a primary school. Looking at a primary school in this country today, the first thing that would strike him is the number of prefabs. There is a clutter of prefabs in school yards, as well as prefab extensions. Sometimes the entire school is a prefab. The Labour Party spokesperson on education, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, had been asking the previous Minister for the past six months how many prefab buildings there are in primary schools. She had been telling him that the information was not available in her Department. However, the Minister for Education, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, recently wrote to Deputy Quinn and told him that there are 2,235 pre-fabs in more than 800 primary schools throughout the country. Some 1,372 of those are being used for mainstream classes, 552 as resource rooms and 72 for special needs education. There are 40,000 primary school children attending classes in pre-fab buildings, which are hard to heat in winter and very difficult to keep cool at this time of the year. They are certainly not suitable on a long-term basis.

Does the Taoiseach believe it is acceptable that 40,000 children should have to go school in pre-fab buildings? Is that good enough after ten or 11 years of the best economic performance this country has ever had?

The worst Government.

Does he agree that there is now a solution to this problem? We know there is a downturn in residential construction. We are being told that by the end of 2009 something like 65,000 jobs will have been lost in this sector, so there is now a capacity to build schools. Now that there is a slowdown in residential construction, which has the same skill set as that required for the building of schools, will he take the opportunity to accelerate the school building programme to bring forward a plan for the construction of permanent school rooms and extensions that principals all over the country have been applying to the Department for over a number of years? This would take 40,000 children out of pre-fab buildings and put them into the type of schoolrooms they ought to have in this day and age.

There are 850,000 pupils in first and second level education and 4,000 schools. The Deputy is correct about the unprecedented capital investment programme for school building over the past ten years, something of which this Administration is very proud. In an effort to deal with historic problems, there has also been a need to provide extra teachers quickly — particularly resource teachers for students with specials needs. These were in their tens and hundreds when we came into office and I am glad to say they are now in their thousands. We are providing 8,000 special needs assistants alone and 7,000 resource and learning support teachers. That is an indication of the effort to deal with this issue. The point raised by the Deputy must be seen in that context.

Is there a suggestion that, rather than providing temporary accommodation which is of good quality in many cases, we should wait until the classrooms are built before putting in the teachers? A decision has to be made. We are putting in extra teachers to reduce class sizes, providing extra supports in their thousands as well as a major capital investment programme. This year——

We are going back to the hedge schools.

That is absolute nonsense. If that is the level of debate we are going to have, it is nonsense.

That is what the Taoiseach is talking about. He is talking nonsense.

There are 2,000 pre-fab schools.

We have seen the most accelerated and comprehensive capital programme for the modernisation of the school system in the history of the State, but the comment I hear back is "hedge schools". If that is the size of the policy content where the Deputy is coming from——

I do not suggest for a moment that there are not continuing challenges or that one can be complacent about their nature. However, I defend the Government's record in terms of what has been achieved under successive Ministers as a result of successful policies. I recognise that, in reducing class sizes, providing thousands of resource teachers and more special assistances, there will be cases — as there always have been — where temporary accommodation is required. I acknowledge that in some instances this has been going on too long and I respect that some people have grievances in this regard, but do not portray the education system as being totally bereft of development or modernisation because that is not a true reflection of the situation.

The Deputies called them "hedge schools".

That was Deputy Costello.

I asked the Taoiseach a very simple question, which I thought was not that difficult to answer. I asked him about pre-fabs and primary schools. However, he talked about primary and secondary schools, teachers, hedge schools——

——anything to hedge away from giving an answer.

Smart comments.

There is a very simple problem here. Some 40,000 children go to school in pre-fab buildings, which is not acceptable to anybody. We all understand that a temporary situation can arise in any school which can be met by having a pre-fab for a year or two while an extension is being built or whatever. However, the problem is that many of these pre-fabs are in effect the permanent schools. We do not even know how long many of them have been in place, although from looking at them in our constituencies we realise that quite a number have been there for very long periods of time.

I am asking the Taoiseach to acknowledge to the House, to the children attending such pre-fabs, the teachers who must teach in them and the parents that the situation is not acceptable to him as head of the Government. Now that there is a downturn in housing construction, I ask him to take the opportunity to accelerate the school building programme. All of the schools concerned have made applications over time to the Department of Education and Science for extensions, new schools or whatever replacement class rooms they need.

The problem is that when they contact the Department of Education and Science, the telephone is dead. They cannot get an answer, and the situation has become worse in recent times as, presumably, the Department cuts, pares and does whatever is needed in light of the current public finances. I am simply putting it to the Taoiseach that there is a solution to the problem. There is now spare capacity in construction and why can this not be utilised to accelerate the school building programme? This would do two things simultaneously. It would provide the schools that will have to be built anyway, because at the moment the Government is pouring money down the drain. The State is paying €35 million a year in rent for some of these temporary structures and the schools will have to be provided anyway. We have to build schools for a growing population and so it is as well to do it now.

Second, there is the added advantage of doing it now because it would give a boost to the construction sector and ensure the spare capacity is utilised. Given the state that construction is in, a better deal could be agreed in terms of the cost of constructing these buildings at this stage.

Hear, hear.

To answer Deputy Gilmore's questions directly, about 4% of the total student population is being educated in what he calls temporary accommodation in terms of the full school-going population. That is the size of the problem he is addressing. It will always be the case in trying to deal with increased student intake in rapidly developing areas that schools need to be provided where heretofore there were not even communities. Priority has been given to this and to children with special needs. Classes have been provided for autism, for instance, and there are 200 special classes now in the system, whereas we had none before. Those types of situations must be catered for and in the context of that there will be continuing occasions, I suggest, where temporary accommodation is part of the solution. It is not the permanent answer to the provision of education in schools, but given the practicality involved in providing for the extra teacher because of the growth in intake or whatever for the following September, this is what happens. There is good quality temporary accommodation in place, as well as poor quality temporary accommodation because it has been there for too long and some schools have not been able to get their projects completed. This is against a background of a €640 million capital allocation this year for schools alone.

It will all be going to County Offaly.

That is the largest allocation ever made for the capital programme in education. It is true that some of that construction activity offsets the reduction in residential housing output but not to the full extent. We all know that. We are also aware that we doubled construction industry employment levels. While employment levels in the industry will be reduced this year from 300,000 to 240,000, when we came into office only 120,000 workers were employed in that industry. While I do not have the information in front of me, I would like to know what the capital budget for schools was in 1997, but I am sure it was a lot less than it is now, and I would expect it to have been so.

What has that got to do with anything?

Credit must be given where it is due. A sum of €640 million is being provided this year for schools alone. The Government will continue to examine how to provide priority investments in education in forthcoming budgets. We have always done that and it remains a priority area. However, there are varying levels of priority in the area. For example, no one contests that in rapidly developing areas a school must be provided while in other cases a school may need an extra prefab to deal with the extra intake, but the latter's level of priority cannot be as high as the case where there is no school and that is the prioritising that is taking place.

The contractual commitments for this year already account for €200 million. It comprises large-scale projects under construction at the start of the year. Projects are constructed under the permanent accommodation and small schools schemes and other commitments. There are projects commencing construction which will account for another €243 million. This problem is, therefore, being addressed significantly. Over €100 million is going into the permanent accommodation and small schools scheme this year. I do not accept there is indifference, inactivity or non-prioritisation of this matter in what is certainly a difficult year but one in which we must work within the budgets we have. The Government will continue to give priority to this important area.