News
Front page, 12 September 2008
The refusal of the Minister for Education, Batt O'Keeffe TD to facilitate the establishment of the proposed Carpenterstown Educate Together school has been criticised by local Labour Party TD, Joan Burton.
In July Deputy Burton wrote to the Minister asking him "to give consideration to the sanction of Carpenterstown Educate Together for September 2009 in temporary accommodation at this [Kellystown] site, jointly with Scoil Choilm for a time if necessary, or at other suitable temporary accommodation until such time as permanent accommodation can be secured."
Last week the Minister replied that following an appeal by an appeals committee in his department, "the proposed new Carpenterstown Educate Together School will not be granted provisional recognition in 2008." However he does hold out a glimmer of hope, pointing out that this decision "does not preclude a future application being approved."
However one of the stumbling blocks to the Educate Together proposals was the lack of accommodation and the school's start up committee had proposed initially sharing accommodation with the new Scoil Choilm community national school on the Kellystown site.
This was reiterated by Deputy Burton but has been ruled out by the Minister who says "the Department cannot guarantee that further accommodation can be provided on this site from September 2009, therefore it would not be prudent to compromise the ability of Scoil Choilm to continue its enrolment expansion by establishing a second school in the building."
Deputy Burton has slammed the Minister's "intransigence" saying he and his predecessors have been frustrating this application by "throwing up road-block after road-block. The idea that there are not enough children in the area to support both schools is ridiculous given the level of pre-enrolment at Carpenterstown Educate Together," she said.
However despite the setbacks of the past year, the start up committee of Carpenterstown Educate Together are upbeat. According to the chairperson on the committee, Maggie Hyland, "we met again recently and we are re-invigorated and enthused about our project. Educate Together have lodged a Notice of Intention for the new school for 2009 and we are very hopeful that we will be up and running by next September.
The main reason given for overturning our application this year was our lack of temporary accommodation. We are currently looking at a number of options for temporary accommodation until a new school is built," she said.
As part of the recent rezoning of the Kellystown lands, it was stated that sites were to be provided for two primary schools and one secondary school on the lands. One of the primary schools - Scoil Choilm - is now up and running. While there has been no official indication as to the identity of the second primary school, Maggie Hyland has no doubts.
"We are that second school," she said.