This article is from page 10 of the 2013-04-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
HOPES that a new state of the art national school will be built in Sixmilebridge to cater for the population explosion in the catchment area over the past decade have soared this week thanks to the intervention of the Department of Education.
Nearly a year after St Fiannachta’s National School in Sixmilebridge was controversially was excluded from the Government’s five-year schools building programme, the Department of Education has performed a u-turn.
In a decision announced on Monday, the department has revealed that the new school project for Saint Finnachta’s will now be progressed through the architectural planning stage.
“It’s good progress,” said school principal Gareth Heagney in welcoming this latest development “and it means we are moving the project to the real business stage and we will be liaising with the business unit shortly to get the specific details.”
Last June on a visit to the school, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn admitted that the facility, which now boasts ten pre-fabs to cater for the ever-growing numbers of students, “wasn’t fit for purpose”.
Sixmilebridge is one of the fastest growing towns in the county with the development of 22 new estates swelling the town’s population by 51.1 per cent over the past seven years.
This population explosion has been reflected in school enrolments – there are currently 421 pupils in the school, a figure that’s set to rise to over 550 in the next three years.
The existing school was built in 1934 and was extended in 1985, while one of the ten pre-fabs in use dates from 1976. In 2005 the school applied for a capital grant to re-development the current building.
Three years later the project went to the design team phase, but was then shelved because of the gathering economic crisis.
However, the school principal has expressed hope that this week’s announcement doesn’t represent anoth- er false dawn for St Fiannachta’s.
“We are thankful and relieved that the Department of Education has finally acknowledged that our school is a school of rapid growth and with that classification it means that we’re going to move along a lot quicker than we have done,” he said.
“This news might be greeted with a little bit of skepticism, given the cutbacks in capital expenditure and the knock-backs that this project has encountered down the years, but I genuinely think that we are on the right track,” he added.