I wish to return to the schools building programme and particularly to the PPP school bundle 5, which I first raised in January. The difficulties caused by the liquidation of Carillion have been compounded somewhat with the de facto construction company, the Sammon Group, going into examinership more recently.

Six schools are at stake here. They are located in my own constituency of Wexford, in the towns of Bray and Kells, and two are located in Carlow. There are real difficulties now. When I first raised this issue in January, I was assured that it would be resolved in a matter of weeks. We are now heading towards May and we do not have a resolution. Needless to say, I am regularly in touch with the National Development Finance Agency is respect of these matters. I still do not have a clear horizon on when the completed Loreto secondary school in Wexford will be handed over. It is ready. It had actually gone through a deep clean before formal handover. It is now lying idle. More worryingly, an official in the Department of Education and Skills has indicated to the school that it should prepare contingency plans for the school not being available for the new term in September. In terms of subject choices, the school had intended to expand its range of teachers. That would be impossible. I do not expect the Taoiseach to have a detailed answer to this at his fingertips, but will he take a direct personal interest in ensuring that these completed schools are brought into public use as soon as possible?

Deputy Howlin will know the arrangements under public private partnerships, PPPs. The strength and, if one chooses to call it such, the weakness of these arrangements is that the responsibility lies with the contracting party to complete the schools and hand them over. In this case that party is now the Dutch Infrastructure Fund, DIF. The State will not be making payments until that handover has occurred. It is DIF that is undertaking the tender for the completion of those works, not the State. That is as it should be because the State cannot breach the rules of a PPP agreement and hope that the terms will be honoured.

The State cannot be impotent. Otherwise PPPs are pointless.

We are not impotent. If the Deputy has been talking to the National Development Finance Agency, as he has indicated, he will know that we are far from idle on this issue. This issue is receiving enormous attention-----

The Government is impotent, not idle.

-----from the State. On the Sammon situation, that company has gone into examinership and that has created additional complications. However, it is very important to say that under the PPP agreement, the responsibility for completing the works-----

Does the Minister have a timeline for these schools?

Responsibility lies with the contracting partners under the PPP and they will not be paid any money until they provide the schools. They have invested close to €100 million in these PPP bundles.

The Minister cannot be a bystander.

I am not a bystander. The Deputy was an advocate for PPPs while in government-----

No, I never was.

-----and he supported the rolling out of these programmes.

We had to do it.

He should not now, when the State is protected by the terms he agreed to, pretend that we should breach those terms.