AN ESTIMATED 40,000 primary school children are attending classes in pre-fab buildings, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore told the Dáil.
The buildings were hard to heat in winter and difficult to keep cool at this time of year, he said. “Is that good enough after 10 or 11 years of the best economic performance this country has ever had?’’
Mr Gilmore said that the slowdown in residential construction presented an opportunity to accelerate the school building programme.
Outlining the progress made in providing educational facilities, Taoiseach Brian Cowen asked if it was being suggested that they should wait until classrooms are built before appointing teachers.
“A decision has to be made. We are putting in extra teachers to reduce class sizes . . . as well as a major capital investment programme,’’ said Mr Cowen.
He was not suggesting, he said, that there were no continuing challenges or that one could be complacent. “However, I defend the Government’s record in terms of what has been achieved under successive Ministers as a result of successful policies,’’ he said.
“I recognise that, in reducing class sizes, providing thousands of resource teachers and more special assistants, there will be cases, as there always have been, where temporary accommodation is required.’’
Mr Gilmore said he understood how pre-fab buildings could be required for a year or two. “However, the problem is that many of these pre-fabs are in effect the permanent schools,’’ he added.
“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.’’
Mr Cowen replied that about 4 per cent of the total student population was being educated in what Mr Gilmore called temporary accommodation.
He added that there was good quality temporary accommodation in place, as well as poor quality. Some schools had not been able to get their projects completed.
This was against a background of a €640 million capital allocation this year for schools alone, said Mr Cowen.
