School considers mortgage as classes take place in shed

IF YOU thought the bad old days of the hedge school had been banished to folk memory by the Celtic Tiger, think again: it’s close relative, the shed school, is playing host to 18 pupils in a west Cork town.

The garden shed, which measures 16ft by 8ft, was purchased six years ago today and is still in use.

It is used — not all at one time — by 18 pupils for special needs classes.

The remaining 227 students at Gaelscoil Chloch na gCoillte, in Clonakilty, Co Cork, fare little better. They are all housed in prefabricated buildings.

The school’s board of management has become so exasperated by conditions that they’ve offered to take out their own mortgage for a new school, providing the Department of Education will underwrite it.

School principal Carmel Nic Airt said the board of management had to take a realistic view of what the future holds, especially with the economic downturn.

Previous promises by the Department of Education have come to nothing.

“We have a site bought and paid for. We were initially told construction would start on a new school this month. But then we were told that wasn’t going to happen,” she said.

She added that the board of management thought the most sensible response was to take out its own mortgage.

The cost of ground rent and renting out the prefabricated buildings amounts to €300,000 a year, and board of management members believe this is akin to throwing money down the drain.

“We are at a very critical stage. Life is very difficult here for the pupils and teachers,” she said.

The garden shed has been made as comfortable as possible. It has been painted, carpeted and covered in felt to keep the rain and cold at bay.

But Carmel Nic Airt and her staff believe a shed is no place to educate the pupils of 2008.

“We have been in touch with Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe, on the issue and he has promised to talk to us this month. We will be writing to remind him of this, in case he has forgotten us,” said the principal.

The school has won support from locally based Labour Senator Michael McCarthy.

“The school has been operating out of a labyrinth of prefabricated shacks for years. In this day and age Minister O’Keeffe should be ashamed to stand over this situation in his own back yard. I am calling on him to take immediate and real action. The children are a priority for the people of Clonakilty and they should be a priority for our government,” he said.