Delight as school finally gets go-ahead for building

CHILDREN at a 100-year-old Limerick school are looking forward to the end of queuing in the cold and rain just to use the toilet after being given good news about their new building — for the second time in a year.

Kilfinane National School was one of those whose building works was put on hold last summer by Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe because of funding shortages, even though the board was told to go to tender for a new six-classroom project the previous February and had builders lined up for the job.

It was one of a number of schools whose appalling conditions were highlighted in an Irish Examiner series last June on the state of some of the country’s most dilapidated and outdated schoolbuildings.