Lotterysnubsinks hopesforPrespool

August 1999

Thousands of local swimmers could be left high and dry as a result of the threatened closure of Bray’s only swimming pool.

The board of management at Presentation College is preparing to pull the plug on the local pool after the school’s failure to secure National Lottery funding to improve the facility.

The school authority was meeting this week to discuss the issue and, according to school principal Paul Scanlon, was likely to agree to the immediate closure of the 25-year-old pool.

He said that the facility, which has an accumulated debt of more than £50,000, was in desperate need of a cash injection to upgrade its facilities.

In the absence of this work, the board had no option but to close the pool down.

‘ The pool is in an extremely poor condition and the changing and shower facilities are even worse,’ he said.

‘We are not prepared to keep it open in its present state and risk the prospect of people being injured or becoming ill as a result of using the pool.’

The Presentation College principal said that he was bitterly disappointed that the school’s National Lottery application had been rejected and stated that a sum as small as £50,000 would have enabled the school to carry out the work.

Mr Scanlon said t the school had made the pool available to the people of Bray for the past 25 years, had run it on a non-profit basis, had catered for virtually every school in north Wicklow and for approximately 4,000 users every week.

The refusal by the National Lottery to provide funding for repair and improvement works at the local pool was slammed this week by Fianna Fáil deputy Dick Roche and by local independent