THE SCHOOL THAT REALLY NEEDS €150,000 ‘It’s very hard to foster a love of sports or PE’
The huge grant given to Wesley to fix up one of its FOUR hockey pitches was greeted with disbelief this week – especially at this Dublin school, where the gym hall has 14 holes in the roof, the basketball hoops have no nets and the rugby pitch is unplayab
STANDING IN in the middle of the gym hall at St Dominic’s College in Ballyfermot, Dublin, I’m surrounded by a hodgepodge collection of buckets, basins and bins. At last count there were 14 holes in the roof and, even though it’s bright and sunny outside, there are loud dripping sounds as large drops of water fall from the ceiling into the waiting vessels below.
There are a couple of traffic cones, with coloured tape tied between them, cordoning off the worst of the wet patches on the floor. Wads of newspaper have been placed under various buckets and bins to help soak up any spills or overflow.
Although it’s a sports hall, with basketball hoops attached to the wall at both ends of the room — with the remnants of just one tattered and torn string net between them — there are no court markings on the well-worn floor. Given that the gym has to be mopped of excess water several times a day, it probably makes no sense to get lines put down.
‘It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s raining or not,’ says school principal Mary Daly. ‘The drips are always there. When it’s not rain, it’s condensation.’
First thing every morning, school caretaker Philip Hickey checks the hall to empty the buckets, mop the floor and lay down fresh newspaper. Built in the 1970s, the hall has suffered so much water damage that it is now impossible to bring in the equipment that is needed to mend the roof.
‘All the joists under the floor area are rotten,’ Philip explains. ‘So we can’t bring in any heavy machinery, like a hoist to fix the roof. The floor would just collapse under the weight.
‘I couldn’t believe how bad it was when I started working here, and it’s getting worse all the time. You’re constantly looking at the weather. It’s bad when it rains — during the recent snow it was like a waterfall in here.’
Outside, the school’s sports facilities are little better. Across a badly pot-holed back yard, a muddy track leads to a couple of basketball courts that can double as tennis courts.
The tarmacadam, however, is covered in moss and the court markings can be barely made out.
‘We have tried to get it removed a couple of times,’ says Ms Daly. ‘But it keeps coming back.’
Towards the back of the old convent building there is a small field.
‘We got a grant through Deis some time back and we were able to have the area properly cleared,’ Ms Daly explains of the Department of Education’s programme to help young people at risk of educational disadvantage. ‘We do use it on sports days and things like that, but as you can see, it’s not suitable to be used as a proper sports pitch.’
Instead, the school’s rugby team, which against the odds has enjoyed some success in the last couple of years, travels to a club in Celbridge, more than 15km away in Co Kildare, to practise and train.
It’s a grim and dispiriting state of affairs for an all-girls secondary school that has more than 330 pupils. It’s also rather galling to think that less than a 20-minute drive away, in the suburb of Ballinteer in South County Dublin, the students of private school Wesley College are celebrating their recent grant of €150,000 to resurface one of their four hockey pitches. The award, which was given as part of the Sports Capital Programme, might possibly have gone largely unnoticed. But then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Shane Ross decided to tweet about his delight at being able to confirm the news that Wesley, a co-educational school with more than 880 pupils, had been granted the €150,000.
The school, which charges day pupils €6,250 a year and their borders almost €9,000 per annum, is in the minister’s Rathdown constituency. And while Shane Ross did not have any role in making or approving the grant, in his role as minister, he authorised the paying of this grant, along with many others.
His congratulatory tweet triggered an immediate and often viscerally angry response. School teachers from around the country took to social media and online news sites to blast the move as ‘a perfect example of educational apartheid and the widening gap between the haves and the have nots’.
Many told of how they are teaching PE in schools that have no indoor gyms and where pupils have to change for their classes in mice-ridden sheds.
Others shared how their schools’ lack of sports facilities will make it impossible for students to study PE for the Leaving Certificate, a new subject due to be introduced from next September.
Local councillors and TDs also slammed the announcement and some questioned how the Sports Capital Programme worked.
‘It’s the Government buying votes by targeting its own middleclass clubs,’ claims Sinn Féin TD for Louth, Imelda Munster. ‘This is meant to be for things like boxing and football clubs, taking children off the streets. It began as a way to promote sports in disadvantaged areas but it’s clear that it’s strayed hugely from what was intended.
‘This particular school [Wesley] already has an abundance of sports facilities. What has happened here is just blatant, it’s beyond shocking, it’s stomach-churning. It is nothing less than discrimination and inequality in the distribution of these grants. We need a thorough investigation to look at where this money is going. And I have asked questions of the minister, about why these private clubs and private schools can’t fund their own equipment needs.’
Under the SCP, which is run by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, schools and private clubs must share facilities with local groups to qualify for the grant. Wesley College agreed to give pitch access to the local YMCA hockey club, which is one of the largest in the country and is based within Wesley’s grounds.
Last November and December, the SCP allocated €60million to 1,800 projects. The deadline for appeals for applications that had been ruled invalid or partially invalid was January 19. Of the 149 appeals that were submitted, 35 were successful, which included Wesley College.
Also successful were five private golf clubs, three of which are in Dublin — Malahide Golf Club received €150,000, Balbriggan €103,430 and Slade Valley €97,760.
Former Dublin Lord Mayor and Dublin City Councillor for Crumlin/Kimmage, Críona Ní Dhálaigh, has spent years lobbying for extra funds for schools in her area.
‘I can think of ten primary schools off the top of my head that don’t have a blade of grass between them,’ she says. ‘Finally, in 2016, we managed to get money for James St CBS from the Council’s Discretionary Fund to help them build an all-weather five-a-side pitch. They had nothing.
‘So to hear about Wesley College, well it’s hard to swallow when in an area like mine, you’re constantly fighting for just basic facilities.’
Indeed, what is already available to the children who attend Wesley is seriously impressive. While there is a strong history of music being taught there, from flute to saxophone to cello, sport is clearly also a priority.
As its website currently lists, it has four rugby pitches, one floodlit rugby grid, one soccer pitch, two full-size hockey astro-turf pitches, two mini hockey pitches, two fullsize hockey grit pitches, 16 tennis courts, two cricket pitches, two outdoor basketball courts, one gymnasium and one sports hall, as well as athletics track and field facilities.
Over the coming years, it has planned a ‘major building project centred around the sports hall and gymnasium which will rejuvenate this area of the campus, while adding state of the art facilities that will no doubt further improve our sporting prowess’.
Back in St Dominic’s in Ballyfermot, the school’s two PE teachers, Sarah Dunphy and Clare McTigue, admit to being more than a little surprised when they first began working there.
‘When you’re in college studying PE and the facilities are so good, you think it’s going to be like that all the time,’ explains Sarah. ‘But
‘During the snow it was like a waterfall in here’
‘Why can private schools not fund their own needs?’
then you come here and see a hall like that, all you can think is: “Aw jeez, what do we do with that?”
‘It’s very hard to foster a love of sports or PE or even teach in an environment like this. Of course the students are aware of how bad it is. They’re dodging drips, or we have to stand in front of wet patches to make sure they don’t slip while they’re trying to play.’
‘We have no choice but to use the hall daily,’ adds Clare. ‘You do the best you can and the girls understand. But when we take them out for away games, and they’re playing on courts that are properly marked out, they’re not prepared.
‘We got into a basketball quarterfinal recently and the referee kept blowing the whistle at them, shouting at them to stand behind the line before throwing the ball in. All I could think was: “It’s fair enough that they don’t know, we don’t have lines!” But it was so disappointing for them.’
The pupils are also very aware of the inequality between their school and others. ‘How else can they feel but like second-class citizens?’ ask their teachers.
Mary Daly is very aware of how important sports and exercise are to young people and hugely welcomed the much-heralded introduction of PE as a Leaving Certificate subject. A teacher at St Dominic’s since 1977 and principal since 2000, she has witnessed firsthand the different issues that have affected pupils over the years.
‘Students these days are encountering a lot of mental health issues and things like obesity, but they need to fund schools properly if we are to be able to offer them a subject like PE,’ she says. ‘We didn’t even consider applying to offer it as an option as we knew that our facilities were totally substandard to provide the opportunities for our students to participate in this most important subject.
‘There’s an urgent need to have greater collaboration between Government departments, like the Department of Health, Department of Finance and Department of Education to ensure we provide a “level playing field” for our students.’
Ms Daly has spent much of her time as school principal trying to get better facilities for her students. St Dominic’s College is designated a Deis school, meaning it has qualified to be part of the Department of Education’s ‘social inclusion strategy’, which helps children and young people who are at risk of or are experiencing educational disadvantage.
‘Through Deis we were able to upgrade our canteen facilities and IT facilities a few years back,’ she says. ‘So now we can provide extra supports for the pupils like breakfast clubs and lunch clubs, various programmes like that. But unfortunately our PE facilities are substandard, to put it mildly. It really is a health and safety risk for students to be playing or participating in PE in that gym hall.’
Such shoddy equipment also makes it difficult to spur the girls on to become active in sport.
‘If you don’t have the proper playing and changing facilitates, well young girls are self-conscious, so you need proper facilities to help encourage the girls who want to participate in sport,’ she says. ‘Girls often lose interest in sport in their mid-teens but we need to do what we can to keep the interest alive.’
The school did apply for a summer works grant from the Department of Education in 2016, but was turned down. ‘We got it costed at the time, how much it would be to build a new hall and we were told €180,000,’ says Ms Daly. ‘But we were told by the Department it wasn’t a priority.’
Despite the lack of facilities, the school does the best with what it has and the girls travel to other locations to practise and train.
‘We play rugby, in fact we’ve had good success this year,’ the principal explains. ‘They play with a club, MU Barnhall, out in Celbridge. They use the hall and field we have here for training but have to go to Celbridge to play matches. And if they want to play a basketball match they have to use the local leisure centre here in Ballyfermot.’
St Dominic’s gym hall is now so bad that Ms Daly is in the middle of the process of applying for an ‘emergency works’ grant from the Department of Education. According to the department’s website ‘an emergency is a situation which poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or the environment, which is sudden, unforeseen and requires immediate action and in the case of a school, if not corrected, would prevent the school or part thereof from opening’.
‘We’re hoping that we will be successful in our application,’ says Ms Daly. ‘But it’s hard to know, it doesn’t seem to be a priority with the department.’
Given the current state of the sports hall, especially after the recent bad weather, Minister Ross’s tweet last week could hardly have come at a worse time.
‘Well the idea that Wesley got €150,000 for a hockey pitch when it has so many facilities already, I saw it and I just thought “oooof”,’ says Ms Daly rather diplomatically. ‘It’s the two-tier society to a certain extent, for a school that already has so many facilities. Did they really need to upgrade a hockey pitch? It’s just that feeling of unfairness when you look at the facilities some schools have due to parental contributions.’
Has St Dominic’s ever tried to fundraise itself locally to help fix the hall?
‘There’s no way in an area like Ballyfermot that we could fundraise significantly to upgrade our PE hall, it’s just not possible,’ she explains. ‘There’d be no point, you can only try and raise small amounts, sometimes. There’s too much pressure on parents here already. So you’re solely reliant on the Department of Education.’
And what about the Sports Capital Programme, has she applied for that?
‘No, we’ve never gone to them but of course it’s something we’ll look at,’ she says. ‘Ideally we’d like to link up with a local sports club, apply for funding and make the hall available to local clubs.’
The next SCP grants round, however, is unlikely to come through until the end of this year. And that’s if the grants are awarded again at all. A quick call to the Sports Capital Programme Unit in Kerry this week revealed that no decision on when the next round will be opened up for applications has been made yet.
‘That’s up to the minister of the day,’ explained a SCP officer. ‘Nothing has been mentioned as yet. All we can advise is that sports clubs register with OSCAR [its Online Sports Capital Register] and you’ll be emailed as soon as anything is announced.’
Standing at the edge of the small field at St Dominic’s, you can see into the De la Salle school for boys next door, where there is a large swathe of pristine-looking GAA pitches.
‘There’s been a reduction in the local population in Ballyfermot, so the De la Salle is closing down soon,’ explains Ms Daly. ‘We’re wondering what they’re going to do with the buildings and the sports fields, you’d just love them.
‘It can be hard, over-looking the dream like this,’ she adds with a small laugh. ‘But the real dream would be that some philanthropic organisation or the business community would step in and help us to replace our hall. Imagine the difference it would make to the lives of the young girls who go here? Now that would be fantastic.’
In the meantime, the buckets, basins and bins remain at the ready...