Hundreds of pupils, parents and teachers from St Mochta’s national school in Clonsilla, Dublin 15, have protested outside Leinster House over the Government’s failure to provide them with a promised new school building.
Campaigners said about 450 of the 900 pupils in the school receive lessons in prefabs and which are affected by leaks and mould.
“We’re here outside Leinster house because 10 years ago the Government promised us a new school,” said Deirdre Herbert, a parent on the St Mochtas School Build Action Group.
She said the Department of Education asked the school several years ago to expand capacity so that it would cater for four groups of baby infants, senior infants, first class, second class and so on.
“We took on extra children, our school didn’t materialise. We kept fighting. They promised us a school in 2015, we submitted all the paperwork and we were told then that, yes, we have been allocated the money for the school. A couple of weeks later, they said ‘sorry, all the money is gone’.
“So we’re here to say the budget is coming up. We want our money, we want our school built, the children can’t survive. There’s 450 children in a prefab.”
Health problems
Ms Herbert, whose son is a fourth-class pupil, said conditions at the school were poor.
“The conditions are horrendous; they are hazardous. There are buckets underneath where the water is coming down and there are buckets in the ceiling, trying to curb the water coming through. The ceiling has come apart and is going to come down on top of somebody.”
She added that there was a large amount of mould in the school and that it presented health problems for children and adults.
She said the pupils and parents had lost faith in the promises of politicians. “They keep telling us the school is on the list but there are 15 other schools vying for this money in six weeks time . . . nobody can give us a definitive answer whether our school is going to be one of them.
“We’re sick of hearing, ‘we’ll do our utmost, we’ll do our best, we’ll promise you this, we’ll promise you that’. We’ve had promises for 10 years. It’s not good enough.”
