Teacher fury over funds ‘spin’

SECONDARY teachers have accused the Government of playing politics with rundown schools in dire need of being refurbished or replaced.

Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland president PJ Sheehy said documents released to Fine Gael under the Freedom of Information Act showed the extent of the deception.

The indication from the Department of Education memos was that then Education Minister Michael Woods ordered that “bad news” letters weren’t to go out to schools in the weeks before the general election.

“Obviously, you will have spin leading up to an election, but that was being less than honest, politically, at a time when schools were under considerable pressure,” Mr Sheehy said.

“So many schools have fallen behind in standards, but the money wasn’t put into capital projects for years, at a time when we could well afford it.”

He said the Government shouldn’t be making a fuss about promising people prefabs, because they are a waste of resources that could be spent on proper buildings.

The documents released to Fine Gael also highlighted that 27 second level projects listed under the category “could go on site in 2002 if funds were available” last year were still at pre-tender stage in the updated building programme last month.

The documents also show that the Minister for Education was initially allocated 183m in 2002, but only spent 171m on the Second Level Schools Building Programme.

Fine Gael has asked the minister to explain why so many schools which could have gone on site if funds were available were not processed, and why the €12m was handed back.

One school on the list was the Dominican College in Galway city, which has been waiting more than a decade for an extension to include eight classrooms, four laboratories and three home economics rooms.

Sr Joan Looby, principal at the 660-student all-girl school, said the staff were almost convinced the €5m project would begin last year.

“The department gave us great hope in April last year, but we’re still waiting and fully ready to go to tender. Even the local government politicians were convinced we were going ahead, but they were as disappointed as us,” she said.

Another principal in the same position is also disappointed that they did not advance with their plans for a 600,000 refurbishment. But Timothy O’Mahony of Grennan College in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, said he did not blame the Department of Education entirely.

“We were hoping things wouldn’t be delayed, we presented our case and it was considered necessary but maybe the goalposts were changed,” he said.

“I’d be wrong to say it’s just the department’s fault, some of it might be that the plans were changed,” said Mr O’Mahony.