But while he dodged the question about blame, when asked for the solution to the St. Mary's problem the minister started by saying that once upon a time in the 70s, '80s and 90s, rebuilding a school would not have been impossible for the church.
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"That brings to light the bigger issue we have which is that many years ago the churches had the capacity to contribute to the development of schools and the building of schools, infrastructure development, that's no longer the case and it's not been the case for some time now. So all that falls on the tax payers of the country, the public purse. We have to find the money to build a building for St. Mary's. So how we do that? will have to be determined. After the assessment we immediately reached out to the social investment fund, because that is one of the best avenues for us to access financing for these types of projects, so that is being looked at, but we are also looking at other possibilities for funding. These things cost a lot of money. The value of infrastructure even from the time I was previously minister of education has like tripled, its crazy. So, it will cost several million dollars to build a building for St. Mary's, we have to identify and access those funds, but we are absolutely committed to doing so working along with the Anglican management, working along with the principal and staff, working along with the area representative Hon. henry Charles Usher, he too has been very involved and engaged in trying to find the solution as well."
The Minister also spoke about the lack of maintenance.
His suggestion is that a regular maintenance requirement be built into all the new projects moving forward.
