Amid continuing controversy about the dilapidated state of many primary schools, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, will today unveil the school building programme for this year.
The list is expected to show that work on several hundred schools has been delayed because of Government cutbacks.
In December The Irish Times published a list showing that work on almost 400 schools had been delayed because of spending cuts. Some of these are on the INTO's "black-list' which includes some of the most dilapidated schools in the State.
Many of these schools remain at the planning stage. In many cases children, parents and teachers continue to endure grossly inadequate accommodation. About three dozen schools have asked the Health and Safety Executive to review conditions in their school, in an effort to speed up improvements.
Mr Dempsey says he is determined to make the school-building programme more open and transparent. In the run-up to the last election, hundreds of schools were placed on the list as a result of local political pressure. But, as many are finding to their cost, being on the list means very little unless plans for construction are well advanced.
Mr Dempsey says he wants to move to a situation where every school in the State knows exactly when the building and/or refurbishment work will start. This has been a long-standing demand of the INTO.
The Minister has said: "As far as I am concerned there will be an open and transparent system."
Mr Dempsey is also anxious to press on with a five-year rolling School Modernisation Programme. Discussions have already taken place with the Department of Finance about this. There are about 3,300 primary schools in the State. Many are low-cost, high-maintenance buildings which date back to the 1970s. It is estimated that the Department's building unit was in contact with about 1,000 schools last year about repair or construction work.
The Government Estimates for this year cut the school-building programme by 4 per cent. By most estimates, this is an effective cut of about 10 per cent, given the inflation in the construction industry.
About €150 million of the total annual education budget of over €5 billion is allocated to the school-building programme.