Books used to burn down classroom

September 1993

Headaches over classroom space at Wexford Vocational School increased last week after a prefab building was set alight using £815 worth of textbooks.

The prefab was gutted on Thursday night, which meant students were without two classrooms on Friday morning.

Electricians, carpenters, and cleaners then worked through the weekend to re-build the prefab. The urgency in re-building was due to the accommodation crisis in the school two weeks ago when 55 students had to be sent home as there was no classrooms for them.

At the moment, the CEO’s office in the school and a local scout hall are being used to accommodate the extra students who enrolled at Wexford Vocational School this year.

A new prefab is also expected in the school by the end of September, which will mean that the 24 students currently using the CEO’s office will have more suitable facilities.

Meanwhile, there was widespread condemnation of the burning down of the prefab building.

TUI representative, Eilis Leddy, said the sight of the burnt-out building was upsetting for both students and teachers. ‘ To think that it was done maliciously! The fifth years had just come back and we had just enough room for them, and then, all of a sudden, we are down two rooms again,’ she said.

VEC member Dano Murphy also expressed disgust at the fact that textbooks were used to start the fire. ‘£815 worth of books is about 15% of our book budget for the year,’ he pointed out.