Batt works his magic as school gets go-ahead

HE didn’t quite pull a new building out of his hat but Batt O’Keeffe did bring good news to the children of a school campaigning for a decade for a move from their prefab jungle.

During a visit yesterday to Star of the Sea National School in Passage West, Co Cork, the Education Minister was anxious to find out what the pupils would like from himself and Fianna Fáil colleagues who had joined him.

Pointing to one enthusiastic boy in the senior infants classroom, the minister was given a very clear response from the pupil on his requirements: “Magic tricks!”

“Well, I think Micheál Martin is your man for that,” said the minister, turning quickly to his Cabinet colleague.

Mr O’Keeffe’s announcement that he is approving their project to go to construction by the end of the year brought smiles to pupils and staff alike.

He also promised good tidings in the next week for a number of other schools awaiting progress on his building programme, with further schools to benefit later this year from an extra €75 million given to him for schools projects earlier this week.

The minister also insisted that the €56m he must cut from his third-level and public private partnership building budget will not have a huge impact.

“We’re going to get massive value for money in the third-level sector, and we’re seeing it already, with projects that were assessed at around €60m now expected to come in at a much lower price,” Mr O’Keeffe said.

Star of the Sea NS was first promised a new premises for its growing population when Mr Martin was education minister in 1999, and the number of prefabs accommodating the 347 pupils has been continuing to rise since.

“It’s been a long campaign but we’re delighted the minister has given us this promise today, which means it’s going to happen sooner rather than later,” said principal Brendan McCormack.

The 16-classroom school will be built about a mile away next to the local community school, on a site which has been available for a number of years but awaiting work to begin because of delays in the Department of Education.

Fiona O’Reilly, who has two children at Star of the Sea NS and chairs the parents’ action committee which has lobbied for the project, welcomed the announcement but said the champagne is still on ice.

“This started 10 years ago and we’ve been delayed since, so we’ll wait until the doors are open before we open the champagne,” she said.