The Minister said that and a further €48m would be spent this year. The need for prefabs would continue “because competing priorities mean that it will not always be possible to have a permanent accommodation solution in place in a short timeframe,” he said.

In a written answer to a parliamentary question by Fine Gael TD Brian Hayes, Mr O’Keeffe revealed that €24.5m was spent on prefabs in 2006, €35.5m in 2007 and €52.86m last year.

In his answer, Minister O’Keeffe explained that demand for additional accommodation in schools had “risen significantly over the last number of years, with the appointment of 6,000 extra teachers in the primary sector alone since 2002.

“In considering the need to provide extra resource and other teachers to schools in recent years, the Government could have decided to make children wait until permanent accommodation could be provided,” Mr O’Keeffe said.

“However, we prioritised putting the extra teachers into schools as soon as possible.”

But Fine Gael spokesman on education Brian Hayes said that “spending this unfathomable amount of cash on prefabs cannot possibly be justified.”

“The money that is spent on renting prefabs in our school system is effectively dead money.”

Mr Hayes said the downturn in the economy provided a new opportunity to radically increase the school building programme over the next few years. (Source: Irish Times)