Early collision for the n ew Coalition in its first week
KANTURK’S new national school is on the way but the long awaited amalgamation of the Duhallow town’s primary schools may go down in the history books for another reason.
It could well be counted as the first clash between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, long time rivals but newly minted coalition partners, as they embarked on partnership government together with the Green Party.
The race to announce the decision to award the multi million euro contract to build the school was won by Cllr John Paul O’Shea of Fine Gael who released a statement on Tuesday, in which the green light for the school was credited to the former Education Minister, Joe McHugh of Fine Gael, whose final day in office was Friday of last week.
The statement states: “Cllr. O’Shea received the confirmation from outgoing Minister for Education Joe McHugh TD. The project is being managed by the Office of Public Works and they have confirmed that a preferred tenderer has been identified.”
The same day, Deputy Michael Moynihan contacted this newspaper to welcome the decision of the current Minister for Education, Norma Foley, to award the contract for the multi million euro school with a view to getting work underway and ‘shovels on the ground’ soon.
“Minister Foley has confirmed to me that she has instructed the OPW to accept the tender to build Kanturk National School.
“I have been working on this for quite some time - it’s a project which is twenty years in the making and which has overcome a lot of roadblocks,” said Deputy Moynihan.
“I hope there will be shovels on the ground in the not too distant future.”
When he was informed that the story was already done and in the paper, Deputy Moynihan gracefully said that he would merely like to ensure that his welcome for the announcement was included in the coverage. He did express surprise, however, that the announcement had not been made until Tuesday given Minister McHugh had left office on Friday.
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