The Department of Education and Science is to approach three second-level schools to take part in a pilot project to bring in a private consortium to build and maintain new school buildings.
This will be the latest version of the public/private partnerships (PPPs) announced by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, earlier this week to build roads, bridges and urban light railways.
The Department is receiving advice from the Department of Education in the North, where five such projects have received approval - three second-level schools and two colleges of further education - and bidders have been approved in three of them.
The schools chosen are likely to be lower down the waiting-list for receiving capital funding from the Department, to be on greenfield sites, and to be outside Dublin. Department sources said no school had yet been approached. The Department wants to see building start on the schools early next year. Beyond the pilot phase, it is looking at a list of second-level schools which could benefit from this scheme over the next five years.
Department sources said yesterday the schools could either be designed, built and managed for a fixed period - for example, 20 years - by a private consortium, with the finance coming from the Government; or a financial institution to provide the finance could be part of the consortium.
The schools would be managed for the fixed period by a private company, for example, a property management company, which could be paid an annual fee. They would then revert to the Department.
"The company would be responsible for ensuring that everything in the school works - classrooms, laboratories, heating, lighting and so on," said one official yesterday. "Severe financial penalties" would be imposed on the company if, for example, a classroom was out of commission for several days.
The company could let out the buildings and facilities like computers to other users when the school is not using them.
Under the PPP scheme, more private consortiums will also be invited to build and manage university facilities. Some universities and institutes of technology have already raised finance in this way to build facilities like student accommodation.