The Minister for Education, Dr Woods, is to investigate how primary schools with dilapidated and sub-standard buildings are spending their annual grant.
Dr Woods said his Department had "serious concerns" about how the grant for primary schools was being spent in some cases.
He said stories about rat-infested schools with leaking roofs "may be colourful and headline-grabbing", but the responsibility for fixing such problems lay with local schools.
Dr Woods said in that context schools were provided with annual funding to make these repairs. He was speaking in the Dáil about the Government's record on primary education. He also voiced doubts about lists of sub-standards schools regularly issued by the INTO. "The vast majority of the schools listed by the INTO are relatively small buildings and therefore amenable to considerable improvement with the funds made available to them.
"My Department has serious concerns about the effectiveness of the devolved grant from a value for money point of view in these cases and has consequently decided to undertake a detailed expenditure review," he said.
The review would "determine exactly how these funds are being spent, particularly in the schools which appear to be unable to tackle these minor works themselves," he said.
Dr Woods said the INTO and the media regularly talked about "rat- or mice-infested schools", but these arose because pest control policies were inadequate.
"The most structurally sound buildings can suffer rodent infestation, for example, through drains and sewers. It does not follow that rodent infestation, where is exists, requires the construction of a new building".
Dr Woods said the Government had poured massive investment into modernising the education infrastructure. In the current year it would be spending €337 million, an increase of 370 per cent on what was spent by the Rainbow government.
However, in a statement issued yesterday, the incoming general secretary of the INTO, Mr John Carr, said the primary schools building programme was a "complete shambles".
He said there were numerous calls to the INTO head office by principals talking about deplorable conditions. He said overcrowding, inadequate toilet facilities, inadequate heating, leaking roofs, unsafe flooring and dangerous playgrounds were just some of the problems.
In his speech Dr Woods strongly defended the record of the Department's buildings unit - which deals with schools.
He said it was "shameful" for opposition politicians to be attacking the performance of officials in this section, which had vastly increased its productivity in recent years.