THE varnish is sticky and the bare cement floors need carpet in the three bedroom bungalow which will be home for Trim's new school Gaelscoil an Boinne.
Work on temporary premises for the all Irish school in the Co Meath town continued yesterday, despite the Department of Educaition's decision to refuse it official recognition and funding.
Over the past few months a group of parents raised £3,000 from raffles, table quizzes and the like, and they say they are not going to let the Department get in the way of their wish to educate their children through Irish.
With 24 names on their books and promises of more in years two and three - before the school has even opened - the parents were confident they would succeed when they applied for recognition before an April deadline. The refusal arrived in the post on Monday and landed like a bombshell.
"We're very annoyed," says Siobhan White, who plans to send her three children, Eoin (3 1/2 years), Jareth (2 1/2) and Shona (one year), to the school. "Their reasons are so lame. The only reason they could come up with is, `you're too near Rath Cairn, you re going to interfere with other schools in the area'. But they haven't proven anything.
"The Minister spoke on the radio this morning and said because the population is going down, there is not, going to be as many children going to school. But we have enrolments for the next couple of years. Trim is a huge town, it's getting bigger, and the school is going to be viable."
Ms White chose to get involved in the gaelscoil for a variety of reasons. "I like the idea of children being bilingual when they're so young," she says.
Another attraction is the small numbers and the fact that both sexes are educated together - unlike the other two primary schools in Trim. The Department says they could bus their children to the small Rath Cairn Gaeltacht seven miles away but she says this is impractical.
"They say there's a bus going from Trim but you still have to bring them in to the bus and it's too early in the morning. The kids are only 4 1/2 and they are going to have to leave the house at 8 a.m. and they won't get home then until maybe 5 o'clock. It's too long."
Treasa Ni Bhealtu runs a nursery in Rath Cairn and says people in the Gaeltacht area would welcome a gaelscoil in Trim: "Ma ta siad ag iarraidh an teanga a scaipeadh, sin e caoi amhain - gaelscoileanna a chur ar siul anseo is ansuid sa tir."
Patricia Hehir, an adult education researcher, and her husband Micheal O Raghallaigh are raising their two children, Muireann (4) and Maebh (six months), with Irish and English. "Muireann is already bilingual, she has far better Irish than English, and we wanted to continue the whole tradition and experience of learning through Irish," Ms Hehir says.
They live in Rathmoylon, about 12 miles from Rath Cairn. Sending her children there would mean round trips amounting to more than 50 miles every day, she says. "It's unreasonable to expect anybody to travel that distance for what should be their right to be educated through the language of their choice."
The parents have already found a principal, ordered school uniforms and made other arrangements for the school, according to the chairman of the organising committee, Brian Flaherty.
"They said we were too close to Rath Cairn, but a lot of our pupils will be coming from places outside, Trim, like Longwood, Rathmolyon, Summerhill and Pike Corner. Some of them would be 12 miles from Rath Cairn."
He says the two national schools in Trim do not oppose the new school, and people in the town are behind the venture. "You know by the people who are involved in other groups, the way they co operate with us.