KildareNet News

04 May 2003: The three primary schools in Naas are bursting at the seams and unable to cope with demand for places in September. The only solution is a new school.

A local councillor says no more land should be rezoned for houses until the crisis has been resolved. Cllr Mary Glennon claimed a developer is using the proposed new school as an enticement to sell houses.

And if the population increases as planned to 45,000 by 2015 even yet another school will be needed to avoid more crises in the sector.

Schools have had to impose an age cut-off date of 31 March 2003 which means they can only accept children who are 4 years of age before that date.

Some 41 children have been refused entry into the schools in September because they were 4 after the cut-off date. A further 34 who were 4 before 31 March 2003 applied late and are probably new to the town. This means 75 children who have applied for junior class places have had to be refused. This number is expected to rise between now and September.

John Nolan, PRO for the Joint boards of Management of the Catholic Primary Schools in the town said the situation is very serious and requires action at local level as well as Departmental level.

The shortage problem is equally as serious for higher classes.

Last week, Naas Town Councillors labelled the delay ‘a scandal’ and blamed Education Minister Noel Dempsey TD for the delay.

Cllrs Anthony Egan and Mary Glennon had put forward a motion ‘that in view of the broken promises since 1999 concerning the proposed school at Oldtown on the Sallins Road, this Council immediately demands that this essential school be built without any further delays or excuses’.

A site for the school was supplied by the developers of Oldtown Estate on the Sallins Road in the 1999 Naas Town Plan. Planning permission was granted by Naas Town Council to build the school in August 2001. However, the Department of Education says this school is not on the approved lists of projects to start in 2003 and there are 411 ‘large scale’ projects already on its waiting list.

Cllr Glennon said this is one of the ‘single most serious issues facing this town which has seen a huge rise in population in the last 10 years with no increase in the number of school places for primary school children’.

She said the schools are to ask the Council not to rezone any more land for houses until schools can cope. She recalled the ‘illegal sign’ on the Sallins road advertising the school. “People thought they were getting a school to open in September 2000. This is April 2003 and the school is not even on the Department’s approved list for this year.

“I was shouted down here prior to the last general election when the then chairman Cllr Willie Callaghan told us this school was going to tender but I knew it was just an election promise,” she countered. “What has happened in the last few weeks has born this out. There is no school coming to Naas.”

Mary Glennon said ‘there is a planning application for every school in Naas looking for pre fab places’. She said she has highlighted the problem regarding first and second level education in Naas to the Dept but the reply she got ‘makes no sense’. “How can they expect this town to expand if they are not going to provide the very basics the town needs,” she asked.

She lambasted the Oldtown developers for including the school in their advertising brochure for houses on the estate. “This is an insult to people who come to Naas and think they can get their children into school here, but there’s no room for them’.

“Disgusting is an inadequate word for this," she continued. "The children are going to be the victims of the fairy tales we were told in the lead up to the 1999 Town Development Plan,” she said.

Cllr Pat McCarthy recalled ‘a litany of broken promises’. It’s a scandal that this school is being put on the long finger, he said adding that the Sallins Road school sign put up by the Oldtown developer had promised a new school for 600 pupils and 22 teachers. “Suddenly it was removed but the hoarding is now advertising new homes in Oldtown,” he said.

He recalled a suggestion the school would open in 2003. “It could be 2014 for all we know,” he said. “We cannot keep building houses without schools.”

Next to speak was FG’s Cllr Pat O’Reilly who said the blame is not with the Council who rezoned land but with the Department of Education officials. “We’re not responsible,” he said. “If we are part and parcel of the Greater Dublin Area we have got to get special attention.”

Cllr Charlie Byrne (FF) said Naas has ‘a massive’ school’s crises and it is is rising week by week. He said it would be raised at doorsteps in the run up to the next local elections. He said the town needs a new school ... now!

Cllr Seamie Moore said he was ‘mesmerised’ by the wording of the joint motion. “In 1999 this Council didn’t say they would build a school. I don’t know who made the promise,” he told members. He caused quite a rumpus in the Council Chamber when he said a ‘benevolent developer’ had made a site available at Oldtown to the local Parish Priest. Cllr Glennon countered saying the developer in question had had by far the biggest amount of land rezoned in the 1999 Town Plan.

Seamie Moore said the Minister for Education ‘has let us down - particular the children who have to go to school elsewhere’. He said lack of Government money seemed to be the problem and wondered if the Council could borrow the money to build it themselves, with Ministerial permission. The money would be recouped later.

Cllr Willie Callaghan FF said the Council should meet Department officials within the next few weeks to put their case.

Mayor Timmy Conway (PDs) pointed out the huge number of new families in the Monread area with young families. About 8,000 people now live in the Monread triangle. He pointed out that schools in nearby Caragh, Kill and Sallins are full to capacity also.

Summing up, Mary Glennon said she was delighted with the support but was sorry that Willie Callaghan thought ‘it was political point making’. “It’s not,” she told him. “It’s telling the truth.”

She told the Mayor and the few other councillors who had complained at this that she entered politics because of promises made in 1999 about the new school. She said the school site was ‘a carrot’ to help push through rezoning in the 1999 Town Plan.

During further heated exchanges she said a booklet by the previous Town Council in 1999 had stated the school ‘will be ready next year’. “You made all sorts of promises you could not hope to carry out. It wasn’t in your hands to provide a school. It’s in the hands of the Dept of Education,” she told the councillors who had been on the previous Council - Mayor Timmy Conway, Cllrs Eibhlin Bracken, Willie Callaghan, and Seamie Moore.

Both Willie Callaghan and Seamie Moore took umbrage at this and tried to have their say. Cllr Glennon said she was entitled to defend herself by rebutting the remarks just made. Mayor Conway interrupted to say he was putting the motion to a vote. It was unanimously adopted.

Having the final say, Cllr Moore said: “We’re all in favour of a school for Naas. It’s not the prerogative of Cllr Glennon.”

The above extract from the minutes of a Naas Town Council meeting held on 30 April 2002 records a motion submitted by Cllr Timmy Conway and seconded by Cllr Eibhlin Bracken, and agreed by the council, ‘That construction on the proposed primary school on the Sallins Road be commenced immediately’.

The Mayor, Cllr Willie Callaghan, indicated during that meeting that the school was ‘at tender stage and will be going out to tender in the near future’. He also stated that ‘it is hoped that the school will be open by September 2003’.