School principal sceptical of promises

PRINCIPAL Paula Carolan, her staff and close to 400 pupils are back in school since Monday after an enforced 10 days off because pipes burst, which flooded their dilapidated school.

While the extra 30m announced in the Budget for primary and secondary school building programmes is welcome, the hard-working principal at Kilmore National School in County Wexford is not one to believe in promises.

“The very day before our renovations were to start back in 2001, we got a letter saying the works were being cancelled. Since then, our sewerage system has backed up, our roof has leaked, our boiler has had to be replaced and all the pipes under the floors of our classrooms burst a fortnight ago and they, too, had to be replaced. “30m is great for school buildings. But we have no idea how or where it will be spent. There’s no way we will get a new school and it will cost at least 1m to put our school right. Even if the department said it was going to do x, y and z for our school, I won’t get my hopes up until that work actually starts.