Dunshaughlin's new education campus to proceed to tender
The Department of Education has given the go-ahead for the Dunshaughlin Education Campus to proceed to tender which will include long-awaited purpose-built accommodation for Dunshaughlin Community National School and also a new 1,000 pupil secondary school for Coláiste Ríoga.
Both schools are under the patronage of LMETB and will share a site on the Dublin Road in Dunshaughlin, beside the Willows Development.
While Coláiste Ríoga is currently accommodated in high-quality temporary accommodation on the site, Dunshaughlin CNS is located in prefabs on the grounds of the local GAA club at the opposite end of the town.
Planning permission has been in place for both school buildings for several years.
Parents of children attending Dunshaughlin CNS have been highlighting the slow pace of progress on providing the new school building over the past year in particular, so news that the project is finally moving to the tender stage will be widely welcomed.
Minister Thomas Byrne announced yesterday that he had received confirmation from Education Minister Norma Foley that both projects would now proceed to tender.
He said: "This is really welcome news for Dunshaughlin as a growing town and I want to commend everyone involved in these projects for their ongoing work. I am pleased to have worked with Minister Foley in highlighting these projects and I will continue to champion them in the Dáil."
Dunshaughlin CNS opened in 2020 in temporary accommodation in the grounds of Dunshaughlin and Royal Gaels GFC but with over 100 now in the school, it is rapidly outgrowing this accommodation.
Planning permission for an eight-classroom school, including two rooms for special educational needs, was granted in November 2020. Parents who enrolled their children in the start up school had expected their children would be in the new school in two to three years but more than four years on, only now is the project going to tender.
The new school for Coláiste Ríoga will accommodate 1,000 pupils and will include four Special Education Needs (SEN) classrooms. The part two-storey, part three-storey school building will provide 37 classrooms together with specialist home economics, science, art, technology and administration rooms, and a PE hall.
Coláiste Ríoga opened in September 2021 with just 14 students and now has an enrolment of close to 200 with the first group of students sitting their Junior Cert exams last June.