School campaign to continue

Tuesday, 06 January 2009

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Editorial

Ronan Judge

Ennis National School will continue in their efforts to secure a new building.

AS the doors at Ennis National School open for another term, parents are vowing to continue the fight for a new school building.
Almost two months have passed since parents, pupils and teachers took to the street of Ennis to protest against the Department of Education’s decision to stall the proposed relocation of the school.
While meetings took place with local political representatives, the summer Dáil recess has meant the issue has yet to move significantly forward.
Yet chairwoman of the school’s parents council, Claire Connolly said everyone at Ennis National School is preparing to continue the fight.
She said, “We haven’t heard anything but that was to be expected with the Government being on holidays. We are hopefully expecting some movement in October. But we are certainly not going to let this matter lie. We’re going to keep fighting. We are planning meetings in the coming weeks and the campaign will continue.”
Parents took the drastic step in June of removing their children from school after the breakdown of the move to a new site at Ashline on the Kilrush Road.
The school has suffered from a lack of classroom facilities. A third of school’s 640 children are taught in 16 pre-fabricated classrooms. The school has been denied extra funding for two extra prefabs. The school’s Board of Management has given serious consideration to trying to attract outside sponsorship to cover the cost of the additional pre-fabs.
Speaking in June the Bishop of Killaloe Dr Willie Walsh condemned as “unacceptable” delays in the provision of permanent accommodation for primary schools in Ennis.
Dr Walsh said feasibility studies carried out by the department in 1999 recommended extensive building to be carried out on three primary schools in Ennis - Ennis National School, Scoil Chríost Rí Cloughleigh and Ennis CBS.
Dr Walsh said, “It is over ten years since the Patron’s Office together with the Joint Catholic Trustees of the Ennis parish schools actively engaged with the Department of Education and Science (DES) to address the needs of permanent classroom accommodation for the primary schools in Ennis under Catholic Patronage.”

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