More than €1m spent renting one school's prefabs [Irish Examiner]
- Published: 06 May 2009
Source: Irish Examiner
MORE than €1 million has been spent on renting prefabs for a growing Meath school where more than half the pupils are taught in temporary classrooms.
Ratoath Junior National School has about 600 pupils but has been waiting a number of years for the go-ahead to build an extension to accommodate its rapidly rising pupil numbers.
But, although school authorities have just been assured by the Department of Education that work should be ready to commence later this year, figures obtained by Fine Gael show the cost of delays in the project.
A response by Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe shows that €1.05m has been spent on prefabs at the school while it has been waiting for the proposed seven-classroom extension.
Another €2m has been spent on nine other schools which, Fine Gael said, had accumulated the highest bills for rented classrooms, although the time scale was unavailable.
Val Murrihy, chairperson of the Ratoath Junior NS board of management, said the prefabs were far from ideal places for learning and many had had to be replaced since they were first put on site about a decade ago.
But a meeting with department officials had left the school confident that work would begin in the autumn on the extension.
The school had just 200 pupils in the late 1990s, but as the population grew locally the senior school moved to a separate home a few years ago and was also expecting to begin work on its own extension soon.
Other schools that were found to have some of the highest prefab rental bills were:
nGaelscoil Longfoirt, Longford: €561,120.
nSt Patrick's Junior NS, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15: €268,942.
nScoil Angela, Thurles, Co Tipperary: €182,158.
nSt John's Infant NS, Kilkenny: €172,290.
Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said that the Department of Education should stop spending so much money on renting prefabs when it would be cheaper to build classrooms.
About €50m was spent renting school prefabs last year and €30m buying similar accommodation, but Mr O'Keeffe has a review of the costs being carried out by consultants.
