School’s €53,000 water charges bill
The water charges bill for Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh in Bishopstown, Cork, represents a third of the school’s annual capitation grant.
The €53,000 in unpaid fees follows continued leaks in the school, which has made efforts to conserve water by introducing electrical timers on urinals and flush restrictions on toilets.
Prior to the Government’s apparent U-turn yesterday, principal Frank McCarthy said the school would struggle to ever meet the total payment. He said despite the school closing for three months during the summer, it received a bill for more than €8,000 in water charges.
He said continued leaks were to blame for the bills.
“However, it can be very difficult to fix a leak. We have to use our own budget. And besides, often we don’t realise there is a leak until another bill comes in at the end of each quarter,” he said. “We are very conservative in our usage. It’s a ludicrous situation.”
Details of the school’s bill emerged during an emergency meeting of the Oireachtas Education Committee where the Catholic Primary School Management Association told TDs and senators there are 46 Catholic primary schools in serious financial difficulties.
General secretary of the association, Monsignor Dan O’Connor, said schools had to be “baled out” by trustees to avoid closure.
In instances where schools had begun to negotiate with the local authorities for reduced bills, he said some had been successful in having their bills reduced from €10,000 to €3,000.
However, Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes queried why, if the water services directive does not come into effect until 2009, had schools been paying water charges for years. He said the legislation from 2000 regarding water charges was open to interpretation and at the discretion of local authorities.
Assistant secretary of the Department of Education, Martin Hanevy, insisted that if its examination of the legislation did not produce an avenue for easing the financial burden on schools then the value of capitation grants would have to be re-examined.
He said because schools were classified in the “institutional space” they were liable for water charges.
Sean Cottrell of the Irish Primary Principals Network said the problem of water charges had been escalating for years.
Principals, teachers and boards of management are angry that parents are called upon to “prop up the system,” he said.
A joint motion by Fine Gael and Labour calling for deferral of the charges was defeated by one vote.
Instead, a motion tabled by Green’s Paul Gogarty calling on the Government to find a solution to the water charges controversy succeeded.
A 10-TEACHER school in Cork yesterday told of how its water charges increased by a factor of five overnight — forcing a significant payout which it had not budgeted for.
The cost of water to the school in 2004 was 34 cent per cubic meter but rose to €1.80 per cubic meter in 2005, representing a five times per cubic meter increase.
Even though the school cut its water usage in half, it still saw its bill rise from €378.63 to €1,015.40 in 12 months.
A spokesman for the school said it had only anticipated an increase of 10% and subsequently sent payment of €212.41 to the local authority. However, a year after the school’s payment, the local authority insisted on full payment, arguing it had no option but to introduce the new waste water charge.
The charges were subsequently paid in full over fears that the water supply might be cut off, a spokesman for the school said. He added that the increase had come with “absolutely no warning” and that prior to 2004 the school had been granted a special reduced water rate.
“The school is not a commercial enterprise but is closer to being a domestic consumer. The board was surprised that the school was not awarded a domestic allowance,” he said.
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