THE Government spent €85m on prefabs and other temporary accommodation for schools last year, with the bill set to grow again this year.

The Irish Independent can reveal the record spend for 2008, which means the Department of Education has now paid out a massive €200m on prefabs and other temporary facilities over the past eight years -- or a third of the current school building budget.

A €75m top-up in the schools building programme was announced with much fanfare last week, but the total spend on temporary accommodation last year was €10m more than that.

The huge spend in 2008 came as some schools received letters from prefab owners threatening to lock pupils out of their mobile classrooms because of the department's failure to pay rental bills on time.

Such "dead money", which will not provide any return in the future, accounted for €53m of last year's spend -- 13 times the €4m paid in 2000.

A further €32m was spent on buying temporary accommodation, which has a limited shelf-life, and has been criticised as a substandard learning environment.

With an additional 13,000 pupils expected to enter the education system in September, the payouts will continue.

The department suspended the purchase of prefabs and other temporary structures in 2003, but reintroduced the policy towards the end of 2007, provided the accommodation would be used for at least three years.

Rent costs have steadily increased since then, as the Government looks for space to cope with a rapidly increasing number of school-age children. Last year's rent bill is a one-third increase on the 2007 total of €35m.

Disgrace

Labour last night described the spending as a "disgrace" and said it showed that the Government didn't have any idea about what was going on in the education sector.

A spokesman for Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe said the Government did not plan on curtailing the spending.

"It will continue to be necessary for prefabricated accommodation to be provided because competing priorities mean that it will not always be possible to have a permanent accommodation solution in such a short timeframe," he said.

The department pointed out that 6,000 extra teachers had been employed in the primary sector. A spokesman said: "The Government could have decided to make children wait until permanent accommodation could be provided.

"It was decided to prioritise the placement of the extra teachers into schools as soon as possible."

Opposition parties were furious last night at what they called a huge waste of money.

Labour's Education spokesman Ruairi Quinn said: "The management of the schools building programme, and the way the department responds to it, is so bureaucratic it is a disgrace."

The Government has "no overview of the education system", he added, claiming officials could not tell him how many schools they owned.

John Carr, general secretary of the Irish National Teacher's Organisation, said: "Prefabs are not an acceptable method of accommodating schoolchildren. They are are too hot in the summer and too cold in winter.

"Too often, temporary accommodation becomes permanent," he added.

- Fiach Kelly