Planning lodged for €14m secondary school for Coachford Community College

A compuetr-generated image of the proposed new Coachford Community College in Cork.

A planning application has been lodged for a new €14m 1,000-pupil secondary school for Coachford Community College in the Lee Valley.

The Cork Education and Training Board (ETB) said the proposed 10,900sqm building will, pending planning approval from Cork County Council, be built on a greenfield site next to the existing 70-year-old school to cater for surging student numbers.

The existing 1950s-built school will then be demolished.

Despite its rural location, its student numbers have almost trebled since the late 1980s, from just over 300 in 1988, to 841 today.

After years of campaigning, funding for a new school was secured in 2020. The lodging of the planning application marks a major step in the process to deliver a new modern school building.

Design

The new school has been designed as a split level, part single storey, part two and three storey building with 37 general classrooms, a range of specialist subject rooms to include a music room, two multimedia rooms, a textiles room, two design and tech graphics rooms, six science laboratories, four art, craft and home economics rooms, and four rooms for construction studies, engineering and technology.

It will have new social areas, admin rooms, a covered storage area for construction studies, toilet and changing facilities, a library, a four classroom special education needs suite, a single storey multi-purpose and PE hall, new ballcourts and a playing pitch.

New site entrances, car parking areas and drop-off areas, a new boundary treatment, and new landscaped external areas are also proposed.

Enda McWeeney, the director of organisation support and development with Cork ETB, described the planning application as “a very significant development for the wider community”.

Coachford College principal Áine-Máire Ní Fhaoláin described it as a “hugely significant step” in the development of their new school.

“It is a testament to the support and commitment of all the members of our school community over many years,” she said.

The school project design team is headed by McCarthy O’Hora Architects, working closely with Kane Crowe Kavanagh Ltd, Malone O’Regan Consulting Engineers, Semple McKillop Ltd and Reddy Architecture & Urbanism.

Meanwhile, An Bord Pleanala postponed at the last minute an oral hearing due to be held on Tuesday into the proposed CPO by Cork City Council of land in Lisheens, near Ballincollig, for an education campus. 

A new hearing date has yet to be set.