Grants review will worsen schools crisis, warns INTO

A DELAY in Government repair grants will worsen the schools building crisis, teachers have warned.

Education Minister Noel Dempsey announced a review of the €18 million Grant Scheme for Minor Works when he published the 2003 School Buildings Programme.

However, the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) was outraged to learn this week that most of the funding is to be witheld from schools until the review is completed later this year.

The grants are used for running repairs and maintenance in the country’s 3,300 primary schools. Every school will get the normal per-pupil element of the scheme - €12.70 for every child on the roll book and costing a total of €5.6 million - in May.

But the extra sum of €3,800 each school normally also receives before Christmas, and totalling around €12.5 million, will not be paid to schools until after the review.

Peter Coakley, principal at St Mary’s National School in Maynooth, Co Kildare, said the money his school received in the past was never enough anyway.

“Every penny is spent on things like painting, cleaning carpets and replacing old blinds and windows, or put aside for bigger projects like we did last year, replacing the heating system,” he said.

INTO general secretary John Carr said the impact of the delay will be felt most by smaller schools, with the grant to a sample 100-pupil establishment falling from €5,070 to just €1,270. A school of 500 pupils will be almost €4,000 short on the grant in previous years, until whatever balance the department decides is paid.