MORE THAN €50 million was spent by the Government on renting temporary prefabricated buildings for schools last year, Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe has said.
In a written answer to a parliamentary question from Fine Gael’s spokesman on education Brian Hayes, Mr O’Keeffe has also revealed that almost €113 million has been spent on school prefabs over 2006, 2007 and 2008.
He said €24.5 million was spent on renting prefabs in 2006, €35.5 million in 2007 and a total of €52.86 million last year. A further €48 million would be spent on such rentals this year, “following the delivery of just under 500 additional classrooms at primary level alone in 2008”.
Mr O’Keeffe said that demand for additional accommodation in schools has “risen significantly over the last number of years, with the appointment of 6,000 extra teachers in the primary sector alone since 2002.
“In considering the need to provide extra resources and other teachers to schools in recent years, the Government could have decided to make children wait until permanent accommodation could be provided,” Mr O’Keeffe added.
“However, we prioritised putting the extra teachers into schools as soon as possible.”
He said the need for prefabs would continue “because competing priorities mean that it will not always be possible to have a permanent accommodation solution in place in a short timeframe”.
Mr Hayes said the Minister must review the cost of renting prefabs in light of falling rents in commercial and residential sectors, given that the annual average cost of renting a prefab was €12,000.
“Spending this unfathomable amount of cash on prefabs cannot possibly be justified. The money that is spent on renting prefabs in our school system is effectively dead money.”
He said the downturn in the economy provided a new opportunity to increase radically the school-building programme over the next few years.
Reacting to the figures, general secretary of the INTO John Carr said prefabs were a “bad investment and unsuitable for educational purposes long-term.
“We all accept that, from time to time, they may be a needed for a short-term measure . . . but what we have is examples of 35-year-old prefabs in use, many of which have been rented for that time,” he said.
“We have teachers teaching in prefabs that they themselves were taught in.
“We have children in prefabs whose parents were in the exact same prefabs and our view is that that’s stretching the meaning of word temporary.“
