College pays €6,000 a day to rent rooms to teach in

A TEACHER training college in Limerick is spending up to €6,000 a day teaching classes in hotels and primary schools because the Government has failed to provide it with new buildings to deal with growing student numbers.

Mary Immaculate College has to rent space at a cost of €150,000 a year. “This is a huge waste of public money,” college president Dr Peader Cremin said yesterday as he opened the annual summer school for primary teachers in Limerick.

Dr Cremin said the major colleges of education had been “devastated” by the Government’s moratorium on new third-level buildings announced last November.