Prefab promises
Related Articles
Thursday January 31 2008
That report placed Ireland joint last among 29 OECD countries for spending on each child according to per capita GDP.
Hopefully, somewhere, among all those billions yet to come, there will be some cash to build real schools to replace the obnoxious shacks that so many of our children face each day.
Generation after generation of schoolgoers continue to endure stuffy, obsolete, unsanitary buildings which were designed to be temporary structures: too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.
A shocking proportion of the money that the minister talks about with such self-assurance is spent on renting these structures.
Last year, €35m of taxpayers' money went on renting school prefabs.
And the waste is increasing.
In the four years between 2002 and 2006, €70m was spent on renting prefabs for some 750 schools around the country.
As the tiger economy slows down, for all the reasons that every man, woman and child in the country must now know off by heart, there are inevitable feelings of opportunities lost.
But while uncompleted infrastructure and a deficient health service can be put right in time, what should be the happiest days of a child's life can never be recaptured.
They should not be spent in squalor.
