Cork school postpones road safety protest 

Move follows meeting between Cork Educate Together national school and Cork City Council

Traffic congestion on Grattan St outside the Educate Together National School. File picture: Larry Cummins

An inner city school’s road safety protest which had the potential to cause traffic gridlock in Cork City next week has been postponed after a high-level meeting with city officials.

The board of management of the Cork Educate Together national school on Grattan St said they felt their concerns had been listened to and that a solution was within reach.

“Given this development we feel a protest is currently unwarranted,” it said in a statement.

We do however reserve the right to engage in such a protest in the future if the anticipated progress fails to materialise.” 

The school, which has been denied a school warden, announced plans last month for a series of rolling protests from next Monday to highlight potentially lethal road safety issues outside its building.

Parents and children planned to spend 20 minutes every school morning, between 8.30am and 8.50am, walking back and forth across the pedestrian crossing outside the school gate.

The protest had the potential to cause gridlock during morning rush-hour on the strategic city artery.

The pedestrian crossing on Grattan St outside the Educate Together National School. There have been several near misses between children and vehicles on the pedestrian crossing, with motorists driving through as children cross. Picture: Larry Cummins.

The board of management said it did not want to protest like this but felt it had little choice after it was denied a school warden due to lack of funding.

Following the protest announcement, a meeting was organised at the school on Wednesday, attended by the assistant chief executive of Cork City Council, Brian Geaney, two directors of services, David Joyce and Adrienne Rodgers, and several local city councillors.

The school authorities said afterwards that they felt all present had listened to their concerns.

“In general, it was agreed the traffic management system on Grattan St needed to be addressed.

"While no guarantees were forthcoming, we left the meeting with the firm impression that funding will be actively pursued to remediate the pedestrian crossing outside our school gate.

"In addition, the current procedures for school traffic wardens and funding will be reviewed.

"In light of this development, we are cautiously optimistic that our goal is within reach.

As with all negotiations, trust is a keystone element. The trust we now place in our Cork City Council officials will, we hope, be vindicated.” 

Separately, the 210-pupil school has asked the Ombudsman for Children to investigate why its request for a school warden was rejected in the context of a policy which reserves warden assessments for schools which already have a warden.

Established in 1987, the school has been campaigning since its foundation for enhanced safety measures on the road.

But traffic volumes on Grattan St increased significantly following the resurfacing of the road in 2014 and the rerouting of a lot of city centre traffic as part of the City Centre Movement Strategy along the street in preparation for the controversial introduction of time-regulated bus lanes on St Patrick’s Street in early 2018.