Department blocked seven bids to get school fire safety reports, says group

The Department of Education allegedly blocked seven separate attempts by officials from schools affected by the fire safety scandal to access inspection reports into the facilities between 2015 and this year.

Educate Together made the claim as it backed calls from parents and teachers for a comprehensive review of fire safety standards in all school buildings amid growing concern over Celtic Tiger-era built facilities.

On Friday, the department confirmed it is instigating a sample review of 25 schools built under the 2008 rapid build programme.

The decision was taken after it was forced to publish five audits into schools found to have serious fire safety concerns, launched after an October 2015 Irish Examiner investigation. The fire safety reports were for Powerstown Educate Together, Belmayne Educate Together, Belmayne St Francis of Assisi, Greystones Gaelscoil, and Mullingar Educate Together.

However, Educate Together said the department repeatedly failed to release details of the building inspection reports. The group, which is involved in four of the six affected schools, says the department blocked seven attempts by it to obtain relevant records 2015.

Noting that the findings were only released after intervention by the Information Commissioner on a separate freedom of information request by a newspaper, an Educate Together spokesperson said: “The Educate Together national office made seven written requests for information in relation to building inspections between October 2015 and August 2017 for these schools. Five of these were specific requests for copies of the fire safety consultants reports.

“The reports were not made available to Educate Together. Nor were the reports been sent to individual school boards of management which had also requested them.”

A department spokesperson said last night there was no political involvement in the FOI ruling and that the records could not released to the schools while the Information Commissioner was examining the newspaper’s FOI refusal appeal.