Growing Navan school places crisis highlighted

The case for the provision of a new school in the Johnstown area of Navan and the need to build new secondary schools in the town have been highlighted this week by two Meath County Councillors following a council debate on school places in the town. Fine Gael Cllr Jim Holloway quoted former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave in his introductory remarks at the launch of the biography of John A Costello recently when he said: “I am going to deal in facts this evening” and humorously remarked that this was “something rather rare in politics today”. Cllr Holloway said the remarks were timely. “For instance, to state that the Government chose to grow St Stephen’s Primary School in Johnstown in temporary accommodation and at a massive cost, somewhere between €1.5 and €2 million, if we are to believe what has been stated publicly in recent weeks, is to deal in facts.” He added: “To claim that the reason why a new school building could not be provided was because land could not be acquired is to deal in the other commodity. And I don’t mean fiction. I mean complete untruths.” He said that his engagement with this issue over the years had been most unhappy. “Since St Stephen’s opened its doors almost 10 years ago, I found it impossible to have discussions with certain interested parties on the issue of a new school. I have no doubt that most members of the board of management would have been willing to have the board of management meet with me but, for some reason or other, that didn’t materialise. I did meet with some board members on a number of occasions outside the formal setting of the board. I would also meet regularly with parents representatives,” he added. Right now, the situation with regard to educational provision in Navan has worsened with the urgent need to provide a new second-level school. “I say all of this because I find it difficult to take seriously the regular bouts of concern expressed by some people on this issue, which, it appears to me, to have all the hallmarks of good timing. One can speculate whether, in independent Ireland, it is the politics of health or the politics of education that has the greater potential to be charged up and deliver the higher voltage. “Right now, the future of Our Lady’s Hospital and the delivery of schools in Navan are of great and genuine concern to the people of Meath and Navan in particular. It is clear that the way we deliver our health and educational services must, in certain respects, change from what has been the practice in the past. There must be accountability. Dealing in facts would be a good start,” he said. Sinn Fein Cllr Joe Reilly, chairperson of the board of management at Beaufort College, Navan, and a member of Meath VEC, has called on the Department of Education and Science to stop procrastinating and deal with the “crisis of the shortage of secondary school places for students in the Navan area”. He said a number of parents had contacted him to express their fears and concern that they have failed to secure a place for their children in a secondary school in Navan for 2011. “I am acutely aware of the growing crisis around the availability of places and the stress being caused to both parents and students,” he said. The councillor said he had raised the issue of places over a year ago at both VEC and council level. The Department had been well-informed and was well aware of the present difficulties and the forthcoming crisis in September but appeared unable or unwilling to make a decision that would allay parents’ fears and deal with the problem of places, he said. Meanwhile, with 48 schools across Meath in need of extensions or new school buildings, Cllr Catherine Yore has hit out at the Government for failing to spend €331 million of the 2010 school building budget She pointed out that 48 Meath schools still await funding to build new schools or extend existing ones. “The result of leaving €331 million sitting in the Department is that children are continuing to suffer in prefabs and overcrowded classrooms, while thousands of builders are out of work. Last year, the Government also left millions that were budgeted for school buildings unspent and the same is almost certain to happen again in 2010,” the Fine Gael councillor claimed. She added: “Schools are being tied up in red tape, with delays being manufactured, to save money which is promised with one hand, and held back with the other. A huge portion of money spent on school buildings recirculates through the economy. Now is a great time to build and get value for money,” she said.