Community steps up battle to save school

A CO Limerick community has intensified its battle to save a secondary school under threat of closure.

Parents of the FJC convent school in Bruff have been told the school may close within three years. It has an enrolment of 268 boys and girls.

Declan Hehir, chairman of a school action committee, said a meeting will be convened on Monday night, in the local primary school, at which the community intend to lobby TDs.

Mr Hehir said: “We were told last month that the school will close in two or three years. Due to this announcement, only 14 students had their names submitted to enrol next September.

“That number was not enough to sustain a class. Now the parents of those students have been forced to look to other schools in Kilmallock, which is five miles away, as well as in Hospital and Croom.”

Mr Hehir said the closure announcement had caused a lot of upset in the parish.

“We were told that €2.8 million would have to be spent on the school building to bring it up to the required standard and the department, it emerged, was not willing to allocate this money. We are now going to press our case with local representatives and it is a very huge issue here – we want to keep our secondary school.”

Parent Siobhan Finn, who has three children attending the school, said the threat of closure was causing a lot of upset among students.

Her son Brian, 15, is sitting his Junior Cert. She said: “He is doing his exams and every day he is asking what he will do and that is not very fair.

“We should be able to protect them from those kind of decisions. He does not know if he will do transition year in Bruff and if he does will he then have to do fifth and sixth year in another school.”

She said the cost of buses will also affect parents.

Ms Finn said to send her three children to another school would cost about €300 per child.

“It is very hard for the parents and for the children. This school has been there for 150 years and the students loved going there. Bruff is big enough to hold a secondary school but it is now up to us as a community to save it and defend our school,” she said.

One of the reasons her family settled in Bruff, she said, was the availability of secondary education there.