School Buildings 12/02/09
Statement by John Carr, INTO General Secretary, on School Buildings
12 February 2009How many press releases does it take to build a school?
The INTO has described today’s announcement by the Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe of new school buildings as little more than recycling old news. The union said many of the building projects announced today as news were originally signalled to be built in 2006.
According to the INTO, in 2006, the then Education Minister Mary Hanafin announced that the following schools were to proceed to tender and construction.
- Scoil Bhride, Nurney, Co.Kildare.
- Barefield Mixed N.S., Ennis, Co. Clare.
- Inchicore National School Dublin 10.
- Gaelscoil, An Duinninigh, Draighnean, Feltrim, Swords.
- St Mary’s Parish Primary School, Drogheda, Co. Louth.
- Scoil Naisiunta Mhuire Naofa, Enfield, Co Meath.
“Nearly three years later,” said Carr, “the current Minister includes these schools in an announcement of schools to proceed to tender and construction. This is fooling nobody.”
Mr Carr said what should be provided now is a ministerial explanation of why these schools have not been built in the meantime. “Is it any wonder there’s a slow down in construction when it takes this long to build a school,” asked Carr.
The INTO also accused the Minister of releasing selective information on the school building programme.
Mr Carr said contrary to what has been promised there is no transparency in the school building process. He demanded the immediate publication of a comprehensive list of all schools saying that 1,250 schools have applied for major building works while only 43 projects were included in today’s announcement.
“All of these schools want information on where they are in the overall school building programme,” said Carr. “They can only know this accurately when they can see how many schools are in the queue.”
ENDS.