Sinn Fein councillor Thérèse Ruane has described the government’s decision to cut the school building programme budget as short sighted and morally reprehensible. The Government, in the emergency budget, announced a €54 million cut in education and science capital expenditure including €30 million from the primary and post primary school building programmes.
Cllr Ruane said: “Over the last three years the Government has spent €113 million on prefabs. The Education Minister has projected a further spend of €48 million on prefabs for 2009. The annual average cost to the Department for each prefab is €12,500. The reality for thousands of children across the country is that they will have spent their entire education in substandard accommodation. There is an urgent need to expand school capacity to meet the 100,000 additional pupils who will enter primary school over the next decade.
“Just last February the government acknowledged that additional monies needed to be earmarked for the school building projects yet they have now backtracked on this and have instead actually cut the budget. Why are we investing money in prefabs when what we need are school buildings?”
