Parents and pupils protest at Ahern’s office

PARENTS and pupils of a school in Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s stomping ground brought their frustration at lack of progress on a new building to his office yesterday.

The Taoiseach is TD for the area served by Gaelscoil Cholmcille, which has been working out of a football clubhouse for the past 10 years.

The school had hoped to relocate to a building being vacated when three other primary schools in the area were due to amalgamate. But last week it emerged the amalgamation has fallen through so the Department of Education has had to go back to the drawing board for a new location.

It is working to acquire a site from Dublin City Council on the Oscar Traynor Road but hopes to seek planning permission for temporary accommodation that would allow the 225 pupils move there next September.

Gaelscoil Cholmcille Action Group spokesperson Joe Murray said: “The irony is that we were indicating this would be a suitable site for a few years before the department singled out the other building, which is now not going to be available.

“We’re around long enough to know that temporary accommodation will be become permanent accommodation which could last another 11 years, just like our current temporary accommodation has done.”

The Taoiseach’s office is just over a mile from the school’s location at St Kevin’s football club, where children occupy the upper floor five days a week.

Many of the children enrolled are living in Mr Ahern’s constituency, while more are in his brother Noel’s neighbouring Dublin North West constituency and others are from the area served by Sean Haughey, a minister of state at the Department of Education.

Mr Murray said: “This is in the Taoiseach’s backyard, so if he can’t sort this out, I wonder what chance is there for children at schools in more remote parts of the country?”

Mr Ahern was out canvassing when pupils and their parents turned up at his St Luke’s constituency office in Drumcondra yesterday.

They had intended to hand him a bottle of contaminated undrinkable water to highlight the lack of clean drinking water at their current location.

However, Mr Murray stressed they would be calling again to remind the Taoiseach of their plight.

“We will be telling Government politicians in the three constituencies of the school’s catchment areas they will not be getting our vote unless we are given cast-iron guarantees and not empty promises that we will be in a new school by September,” he said.