Seven schools make building list

SEVEN Clare schools have been included in the Department of Education’s list of school building projects for the next five years.
As announced last December, construction of a new building for Ennis National School is to get underway this year.
Ennis Educate Together, currently based on the Gort Road in the county town, is to get a new school with work beginning in 2014/15. Work on a new school for St Joseph’s Tulla is set to begin in 2015/16.
In 2014/15 extensions for Shannon Comprehensive School, Ennis Community College, St Anne’s Community College, Killaloe, and Knockanean National School are to go to construction.
There was disappointment in Sixmilebridge as the local national school was omitted from the list.
Speaking to The Clare Champion on Wednesday, parish priest Fr Harry
Bohan said he is still hopeful that Minister Ruairi Quinn’s mind could be changed.
“We have had contact with local politicians and I got two calls yesterday to say that Minister Quinn is going meet a group of us after Easter.
“I think he mustn’t have been aware at all of the type of growth there is in the place and the situation with regard to the school and we’ll be clarifying that for him.
“There is be close on 500 children at the school next September. Well over half of them will be in prefabs and the school is very old. There’s no question whatsoever this school has to be replaced.
“I don’t know where the man got his facts, but we’ll be giving him the facts now. There are over 80 children going into the school next September and that’ll be continuing. This school, in a couple of years, will have six or seven hundred children. He may not have been aware of that.”
Sean Ó Confhaola of Ennis Educate Together said that at the moment, all the school’s pupils are being educated in prefabs.
“It’s complete prefabs. We’re not in a terrible bad state at the moment, but the prefabs have quite a short shelf life. We’re noticing floors starting to go and they tend to get a bit damp in places, they’re not built to last. One section is eight or nine-years-old and we have to replace a toilet block. There are leaky roofs, the flat roofs don’t seem to be designed for the West of Ireland.”
There is uncertainty about where the new school will be, he said. “We don’t know exactly. In the latest letter from the department they said they had a strategy to purchase a site so maybe they have some idea themselves. We’ve been looking ourselves around the Gort Road and Tulla Road and the department have five or six sites they’ve been looking at.”
He said the school already has 150 pupils but that the number might grow following the news.
Morgan Heaphy, principal of St Patrick’s Comprehensive in Shannon, said the new extension will provide room for many more students.
“The information we have is that there will be accommodation for another 350 pupils, so it is a big, big extension. There are increased numbers in the primary schools and the department realise that they’ll be coming on stream in three or four years time and we’ll have to meet the demand.”
He expects the school’s enrolment to increase quickly in the coming years.
“We have 610 pupils at the moment. Our enrolment for the coming year is 144 and it’s going to be at that level and even increasing for the next few years. Our numbers will be up significantly from next September.”
Headmaster of Ennis Community College Matt Power said he is “absolutely delighted” that the school would have a large, new extension.
“The department have their figures and they expect a requirement for 275 additional places by 2014. It’s an opportunity, depending on how it’s placed on the site to incorporate the Gaelcholáiste.
“As of now the Gaelcholáiste use the facilities here in the main school and they could all be brought together. At the moment, there are six classrooms for the Gaelcholáiste, but for the specialist things like science, art and technology they use the resources in the main school. But when this very large extension is built, if the Gaelcholáiste is housed in it they would access to those facilities in it.”
Principal of St Joseph’s Secondary School in Tulla, Margaret O’Brien said that while the school’s inclusion is welcome, she would rather it had been included in the 2014/15 schedule.
“We are delighted to be included in the list but we hope to beat that deadline if we can get everything in place beforehand.
“I suppose we were disappointed we weren’t included a year earlier. It will mean a whole brand new school with state of the art facilities and playing facilities and hopefully facilities that we can share with the community.”