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Schools’ Third World conditions slammed

Thursday, 12 June 2008

The ‘Third World’ conditions at schools across the Southside have been highlighted in a critical attack on the education system.
According to Fine Gael TD Olivia Mitchell, 500 children at St Colmcille’s JNS in Knocklyon are housed in 16 prefab units, which are in such an appalling condition that they can no longer be maintained.
Speaking in the Dail recently, Deputy Mitchell also emphasised the overcrowding in other South Dublin schools.
“In Divine Word in Rathfarnham they are so short of space this year that they will have to merge the three junior infant classes into two oversized senior infants,” she revealed.
According to Deputy Mitchell, Our Lady’s Grove, Goatstown was led to believe they had the green light and even obtained planning permission for a permanent building next to the existing temporary building.
“But now they have been told they cannot even go to tender,” she said. “Two teachers retired there last year having spent their entire teaching careers in prefabs.”
Deputy Mitchell spoke of cloakrooms and toilets being converted to facilitate meetings, breaks and special needs support areas, with small prefabs being partitioned off into even smaller spaces.
“This is the stuff of the Third World,” she said.
“In Holy Trinity National School in the Gallops, Stepaside, they have no permanent buildings at all and are entering their fourth year in prefabs. And there are over 700 schools on the list ahead of them awaiting funding.”
In response to Deputy Mitchell’s comments, the Department of Education stated that there are now 6,000 more primary school teachers than there were in 2002. The department is also providing e4.6 billion, or e380 million extra, for teacher pay and pensions as part of Budget 2008.
Keith McMullen, a spokesman for the department, explained that the prefabs at these schools were a temporary stop gap to cope with an increasing student population until permanent facilities were constructed.
“The prefab units in Knocklyon are to assist a building project to merge St Colmcille’s Junior and Senior schools,” he said.
“Our Lady’s Grove and Divine Word are also going through extension projects of their own. However, given the overall demand for capital funding under the School Building Programme, it is not possible to progress all projects immediately.”
Under the School Building Programme, individual projects are progressed in relation to their priority rating and are advanced incrementally by the department.
Mr McMullen added that it was necessary for the department to make use of temporary facilities in order to accommodate the increasing school population.
“In considering the demand to provide extra resources and teachers to schools in recent years, the department has prioritised putting extra teachers into schools as soon as possible,” he said.
“This in many cases means that the quickest way of providing accommodation in the short-term is through prefabricated units. While the ideal solution is to provide permanent accommodation, modern prefabricated units that conform to health and safety regulation are suitable for use as school accommodation.”

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