The message from the Estimates is clear. Rat-infested, damp and dilapidatedschools will continue to be part of Irish education, writes Sean Flynn, education editor.

It is back to the future in education. The prefabs - those cheap, stuffy rooms, which have been a blot on the education landscape for generations will return to centre stage. Ambitious plans for new school accommodation - of the type other EU citizens take for granted - will be put on hold or cancelled. Thousands of pupils, parents and teachers must still tolerate the kind of accommodation which scarcely meets basic standards.

The severe cutbacks announced in the Estimates last Thursday mark the end of a brief shining moment in education. Now, it is back to the hairshirt.

The primary-school building programme faces a cut of 4 per cent. By most estimates, there is an effective cut of 10 per cent when construction industry inflation is factored in.

The Department of Education is making no effort to disguise the bad news. "The detailed capital expenditure proposals for 2003 will be published in January and will show little or no new activity at all levels," it says.

Trying to figure out precisely how your local school will be affected by the Minister's plans is not easy. There are several hundred primary schools in the Department of Education school-building programme. Some of these have been approved for major building projects, some require urgent repair work, some have just begun the process of architectural planning.

In the run-up to the general election, dozens of schools who had been waiting for repair or renovation work were given the good news; the money would be available for the new school, the extension, the repairs or whatever. Today, schools in every county are holding their breath and wondering whether their project will survive the new austerity regime.

School principals say the worst part of the current situation - apart from the disgraceful conditions in schools - is the uncertainty about the future. One said: "The Department play ducks and drakes with us. We were given conflicting signals before and after the election. We would like to know where we stand".

The Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, accepts that the current situation is intolerable. At a press briefing, the Minister said he wanted to end the "nonsense" that goes on at the moment where parish priests or others think they can move a school up the priority list by whispering in a politician's ear.

He says he wants to move to a new open and transparent system, beginning next January. His first move is to publish a full list which should tell every school in the State precisely where they stand. After that, he hopes to agree on a five-year funding programme on school buildings with the Department of Finance and the National Development Finance Agency. The plan is to have a School Modernisation Fund in place next year.

So how will the school in your locality emerge from the list? Which schools will get priority?

It would appear that those schools who are already within the system and where work is well advanced are relatively safe. "Works in progress", as the Minister described them, will gain priority.

The Minister stressed he would not be working off the INTO "black-list" of primary schools. Instead, he would be giving priority to those schools with the most pressing needs, as identified by his Department. It would be pointless, he said, to let in schools at the bottom of the list without clearing those at the top.

The Minister openly admits it could take a decade to clear the current building list, given the years of underdevelopment in the sector. His ambition is to fashion a new more transparent system where, he says, "it will be a waste of time phoning a politician or whispering in his ear".

Dempsey, a former teacher, is clearly appalled by the sub-standard conditions in some Irish schools. But the current budgetary conditions make it difficult to achieve real change. "We would all love to have a magic wand," he says.

The Minister has been widely praised for his decision to shift scarce resources away from third-level and towards the primary sector. This is acknowledged as the best means of combating disadvantage. Dempsey is perhaps the first minister who has identified primary education as his priority area. But this will make little difference to tens of thousands of pupils, teachers and parents. For the foreseeable future, they will have to muddle through with sub-standard accommodation and facilities.