Fears that school won’t be able to reopen as electricity trips when heat turned on
A GALWAY school may not be able to reopen in September because the electrical system there keeps tripping when teachers switch on heaters, it has emerged.
When they return to school, the 800 students at Scoil Chaitríona in Renmore will continue to share prefabs and 1970s buildings which were designed for 25 years’ use.
Teachers even have to wear overcoats in class to stay warm, according to Brian O’Keeffe, chair of the board of management of the school’s senior classes.
The windows are single-glazed, and the walls and roofs lack insulation.
Mr O’Keeffe said the school had put in an application last week for €140,000 in emergency funding, which will need to be approved urgently if the school is to open in time for classes in September.
‘We have to get the money approved and the job done quickly, because if it is not, we may not be able to reopen. It is dangerous if the power keeps tripping,’ he said.
‘Hopefully the minister will be able to get the approval through quickly. It’s a massive amount of money, and I do feel that with the state of the building it is throwing good money after bad, but the other solution is no school at all.’
Mr O’Keeffe said he had been shocked and appalled when he first saw the school a year ago. ‘I see teachers wearing their overcoats in class. And we are putting the poor children in there. The temperature is often below acceptable norms. It is just not acceptable in this day and age,’ he said.
He explained that the school had been approved for a full rebuild in 2008, but that the plans had been put ‘on the back burner’ due to the economic collapse. The school made a further application to the Department of Education last year for a rebuild, but Mr O’Keeffe said the board had to find a location to move the pupils into for a year, while the rebuild took place.
He said that location had to be found before the department would start the three-year design and planning process. Portakabins would be built on it, but the site had to have sewerage and electricity.
‘There are not too many of those sites around,’ he said. Local FF councillor Alan Cheevers said he would raise the matter at a meeting with Education Minister Norma Foley in the next month.