This article is from page 23 of the 2005-11-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 23 JPG
ENNIS Educate Together National School (EETS) may have to turn away new students if their current situation continues.
The school’s Board of Management has called on the Department of Education and Clare County Council to assist it in purchasing the site it currently occupies on the Gort Road in order to facilitate the building of a permanent school. The Board of Management are calling on local and national elected representatives to help the school achive its goal in the short term
and say they had received assurances from Clare County Council that it would support the school in purchasing the site.
Since 1998 the school has leased its current premises on the Gort Road from Clare County Council. While the Department of Education pay the majority of the rent, the school must make up the shortfall. The pre-fabricated buildings house over 160 pupils, 12 teachers and two special needs assistants, and accord- ing to school principal Sean O’Conthaola the structural limitations of the building means the school is bursting to the seams.
‘The difficulty here is really a practical one. Because it is a pre-fab the classrooms here are smaller. There are over 160 children in the school so we are officially full, we don’t have room for anyone else but we have a very open enrollment policy and we are very reluctant to turn anyone away. We are as full as can be. We have an application in for an extension and it just seems to be bad value to be throwing more money at it. The site can’t be developed either we don’t have the money to do it and the De- partment won’t give any grant aid to a site they don’t own.”
With around 60 per cent of the school’s stu- dents living within walking distance of the building, Mr. Confhaola believes that relocat- ing the school would impose an extra burden on parents while another difficulty facing the site iS proper access to the sewage system. The big- gest obstacle though facing any future develop- ment of the site, according to Mr. O’Confhaola is planning.
“The planning issue is a big problem. The development plan for the town has zoned vari- ous sites community, originally they had zoned them educational but that didn’t go through. We looked at a few of these sites that were zoned community, but they are not actually for sale. They are owned by private developers”. He went onto add that it was “unfair to keep the school waiting just because of bad planning”.
Earlier this year Clare County Council wrote to the Office of Public Works (OPW) regarding the Gort Road site and stated that in accord- ance with the Ennis and Environs Development Plan 2003 the land adjacent to the site of the school would not be considered consistent with the proper planning and sustainable develop- ment of the town. The OPW have said that they don’t accept that the Department of Education and Science and the OPW had forgotten about the school’s situation.