The Department of Education has spent €2 billion on building new schools and improving existing schools during the past five years, according to a new report.
New buildings are now costing between €3 million for an eight-classroom primary school and €17.2 million for a school accommodating 1,000 students according to the Department of Education report.
Launching the report yesterday, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said that 6,500 projects were completed between 2000 and 2005. This included 57 new primary schools and 19 new schools at post-primary level.
"The department expects to approve another 200 projects later this year, which will represent a further investment of some €70 million in facilities," Ms Hanafin said.
Responding to yesterday's report, the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), said it recognised that there had been a significant improvement in the school building programme.
However, it added that there were a number of primary schools where there has been little or no progress.
INTO secretary general John Carr said many children were still being taught in non-permanent accommodation because the building programme had not kept pace with rapidly developing areas.
"Schools that have been waiting for years for permanent accommodation are still in ad hoc school buildings such as sports clubs. Other schools in dilapidated buildings for years complain that they are being passed out by other schools in terms of priority," he said.
The union is also concerned at the lack of transparency in the system and has called for the full publication of all information relating to the school building programme.
Some €3.9 billion in capital funding has been allocated for the next five years in an effort to modernise the 4,000 school buildings countrywide, some of which are more than 100 years old.
Ms Hanafin said there had been an increasing number of planning application objections to proposed new school buildings and that this was delaying building in several cases.
She said that in built-up areas, where residents were objecting to planning applications on the basis of increased traffic congestion and reduced green space, communities were "cutting off their noses to spite their faces".
She said there was also the difficulty of securing sites from landowners or developers at a reasonable price.
When asked about a dispute in Laytown, Co Meath, where parents last week objected to having their children in temporary classrooms at a racecourse nine miles away, Ms Hanafin said the department was pursuing a site for a new school but that there was a dispute over the ownership of the land.
Ms Hanafin said three objections had been lodged in response to the application for planning permission and that the department was seeking temporary accommodation as a short-term measure.