Overloaded wastewater plant halts progress in Cork village

As the local primary school in Carrignavar prepares to move to a new campus this summer, concerns over the fate of the former building, located centrally in the village, have been raised

Cork diocesan secretary Fr Michael Keohane said no plans for the soon to be vacated old school site had been formulated 'as of yet'. Picture: David Creedon

A two-and-a-half acre former school site in the Cork village of Carrignavar will be left vacant at a time when the area is “crying out for houses”, due to the village’s overloaded wastewater treatment plant, the chairman of the school’s board of management has said.

Local primary school Scoil an Athar Tadhg is due to move into an €11m new school campus this summer, but concerns have been raised as to the fate of the former school building which is located centrally in the village.

“The village needs development, but this site in the middle of the village will now be vacant and will be prone to antisocial behaviour,” Oliver Manley, the chairman of the school’s board of management, told the Irish Examiner.

Planning applications in the village are being hampered by the village’s overloaded wastewater treatment plant.

However, the village, which is 10km from Cork City, was overlooked when six villages were selected for wastewater treatment plant upgrades under Uisce Éireann´s Small Towns and Villages Growth programme.

The villages of Ovens, Ballineen-Enniskean, Belgooly, Ballinspittle, Castlemagner, and Glanworth were selected by Cork County Council for the programme in 2022, with works supposed to be completed by 2024.

“The council did not prioritise us even though we are within striking distance of the city,” said Mr Manley, a lifelong Carrignavar resident.

It’s a wider issue for rural villages and for rural development in general, both nationally and within the county.

When Scoil an Athar Tadhg applied for planning permission for a new school in 2018, Inland Fisheries appealed to An Bord Pleanála on the basis of the overloaded sewage system, and the school was only granted planning on the grounds that the student body could not increase at all.

Mr Manley said this was having a chilling effect on development in the town, which was an ideal area for families to live.

It’s a great village to come and live in because there is a secondary school here as well, and people can’t come and live here because there are no houses for them.

“You could accommodate 30 houses on that two-and-a-half-acre old school site in the village, with people crying out for houses.”

No plans for the soon to be vacated old school site had been formulated “as of yet”, diocesan secretary Fr Michael Keohane told the Irish Examiner.

Carrignavar’s wastewater treatment plant was reported as overcapacity in an EPA inspection of the Uisce Éireann facility in 2021.

Effluent from the plant, discharged to the Cloghnagashee River which is a tributary of the Glashaboy, was found to be in breach of its emission limit values.