The Department of Education has said there is no money to replace prefabs at a Limerick school which Minister of State Mr Tim O'Malley said yesterday "wouldn't pass safety standards".
While Mr O'Malley, the PD Minister of State for Health, implicitly criticised the Government for making promises on school buildings which it did not keep, the Department of Education repeated that the promised €2 million building project at St Nessan's school will not go ahead this year and possibly not next year.
The Department said yesterday that it would pay for any repairs needed at the school where parts of the ceiling collapsed in a classroom full of children on Thursday.
However, the building project, promised by Fianna Fáil and PD politicians before last year's election, will not begin this year after all and depends on the funding allocation in 2004 and subsequent years.
On a visit to Limerick yesterday the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, also said whatever repairs were needed would be paid for out of a contingency fund, but the major building project would have to wait until there was money available.
Mr O'Malley had said earlier that the prefabs where the ceiling collapsed were "totally unsuited" to housing a primary school. He recalled getting a letter from the then minister for education, Dr Woods, before the May 2002 election saying the job would be done.
He said this letter had amounted to the go-ahead for the work and that he and the Tánaiste had visited the school during the election campaign on the basis that the job was going ahead.
"That was my understanding and it was also the understanding of all the teachers and the parents in the school."
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme, he said the work had been postponed because of a lack of funding but "I certainly will be putting all the pressure I can on the Government to get funding".
Asked whether he had been part of an effort to lead people up the garden path for electoral purposes, he said: "I don't tell lies. I don't lead anyone up the garden path. I was fully under the assumption that it was going ahead."
Following a visit to the school by Office of Public Works personnel yesterday morning, the Department of Education said the fastenings of a ceiling panel measuring 4 ft by 4 ft in a prefabricated building had prised themselves loose.
The Office of Public Works had now been authorised to carry out whatever work was needed to secure all these ceiling panels.
The OPW has arranged for a structural engineer to survey the prefabricated buildings to ensure they are structurally sound, the statement said. Any remedial action would be paid for out of the Department of Education's contingency fund which was intended for this purpose.
While the statement maintained that the school is part of the 2003 school-building programme, it also made clear that no building work would be carried out on it this year.
The timing of when the project would go to tender, or when construction would begin "is dependent on the funding allocation in 2004 and subsequent years".
St Nessan's was one of dozens of schools which were told before the election that work was to begin, only to be told the opposite afterwards.
Last November, Mr Dempsey admitted it could now take a decade to clear the list of schools.
Meanwhile, Minister of State Mr Willie O'Dea, who like Mr O'Malley represents the Limerick East constituency in which St Nessan's is located, said he had announced in summer 2001 that work on the school was going ahead, and he had done so "in good faith".
Also speaking on Morning Ireland, he said the promised building projects were not being undertaken because the money ran out.
"I am disappointed that the money ran out before we had completed the building programme. The job in St Nessan's will go ahead but at a later date than originally envisaged."