POSH SCHOOL BIDS FOR €105K HOCKEY GRANT

Assets worth €10m yet Sutton Park still wants taxpayers’ cash

SCHOOLS 1

A RICH private school has the begging bowl out for more than €100,000 in taxpayers’ cash.

Sutton Park School in North Dublin has made an application to the Sports Capital Programme.

The second most expensive private school for day pupils wants €104,902 to upgrade its hockey facilities.

The grants are meant for public based organisations to help improve access to facilities in the community.

But Sutton Park is an exclusive school with annual fees of €7,900. The most recent accounts filed show it has assets worth more than €10million.

It already has its own hockey pitch and the application is to renovate the existing changing room and equipment.

Former DCU president Ferdinand Von Prondzynski is listed as a director at the school. Separately, he is at the centre of a row over an alleged conflict of interest at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen after his business partner was appointed to a top role at the institution.

The Sutton Park application comes less than a year after Sports Minister Shane Ross was berated for forking out €150,000 to Wesley College in his own constituency. Defending the decision, he said: “The local YMCA club will get 31.5 hours a week access to Wesley hockey pitch. The local national school and others will also use it.”

A review of the 2017 round of funding recommended private schools “should remain eligible to apply”. However, it added: “Future funding of schools projects should include a greater weighting towards schools in disadvantaged areas.”