‘It’s a building site’: parents to picket over school repairs
PARENTS will picket a Dublin school today in protest at its reopening following emergency repair work.
Two schools in Tyrrelstown, Co. Dublin – St Luke’s National School and an Educate Together national school – were among the 23 schools affected by structural defects uncovered during safety inspections.
Yesterday morning, parents were invited to inspect the repairs in Tyrrelstown – leaving some at the Educate Together school angry, while one local councillor said the school resembled the prison yard at Mountjoy jail.
Charlie Cleary, a parent of two pupils, called it an ‘absolute total disgrace and disaster’. ‘I worked in construction for years, there is a wall around that school, gates and fencing around it. Once you are inside that fencing, you are on a building site – end of story. Kids are not allowed on a building site. You can’t walk kids through a building site.
‘I peeked [into the classrooms] myself and they are absolutely crazy. I don’t know how they even think about putting children in that.’
Mr Cleary said there should be an investigation into the foundations of the school to ensure that it isn’t comproin mised. Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, Fingal County Councillor Matthew Waine, agreed that the school resembled a building site.
‘There are mountains of scaffolds at all different locations. There is portable fencing to remove certain areas or provide a certain safety barrier should a wall collapse. So even those measures themselves are posing questions in the minds of parents as to whether they themselves are safe,’ said Cllr Waine.
When asked about the school yards, Cllr Waine said that it looks like ‘the recreation yard Mountjoy prison’. ‘The visual impression when you walk in is very intimidating. It is not just a few pieces of scaffolding and a bit of timber. The level of scaffolding, fencing and timber is very extensive. Lots of areas have been fenced off and it does look imposing, almost prison-like.’
Yesterday, Tyrrelstown Educate Together announced that it would be opening today and said protective structures had been installed to the satisfaction of the Department of Education and the consulting engineers.
In addition, a company called Ahern Fire Engineerng Consultants said that it had ‘reviewed the works from the fire-safety perspective and are satisfied with the temporary protection works’ and ‘have worked with the contractor, the design team and associated stakeholders to ensure the schools can open safely’.
Not all classes will resume in the Educate Together building from today, however.
Junior and senior infants will return to Tyrrelstown while the 1st to 6th classes will be relocating to the nearby Hansfield Educate Together Secondary School. According to Tyrrelstown Educate Together, a number of measures have been put in place in order to keep the pupils safe,
‘Like recreation area of Mountjoy’ Picket planned for reopening
including teachers escorting pupils to the school in the morning. Parents are also being encouraged to walk their children to the school gates and to park in alternative areas.
St Luke’s National School, the other Tyrrelstown school affected, said that the board of management and the patron of the school were not in a position to open the school on the ground floor or the hall until a safety check had been completed
For 3rd up to 6th class, pupils will be going to the nearby Le Chéile school in the short term while parents of pupils in junior infants up to 2nd class have not been told when their children are due back.