Parents of children attending a 109-year-old mice infested primary school in Co Galway are seeking an urgent meeting with Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe about getting a new school built in the area.
The parents of the 49 pupils attending Eglish school outside Ballinasloe insist the building is a health hazard and say no amount of repairs will solve the problem.
Bridie Harney, the chairperson of the parents’ association, says parents are not going to “sit back” and “do nothing” any longer.
“Our children deserve an education in a safe, healthy environment – this is not happening. We acknowledge the trojan efforts of our school principal Mrs Elizabeth Mulry and the board of management in trying to procure a new school building and we fully support same.
“The school building is in a very poor and dangerous condition. The problems with the building cannot be fixed with a mop and bucket, a lick of paint, or a hammer and a few nails. If they could the parents would have sorted them out long ago. As it is, the caretaker has done a great job just keeping the place going.
“There are rats on the outside and we now have mice on the inside. We have a Rentokil report stating that rodents are chewing wires. This is a fire hazard and with the windows nailed shut it is a tragedy waiting to happen. Engineers’ reports have been sent in to the Department of Education and Science listing structural cracks in the walls, problems with the wiring and the windows, damp, mould, rotten roof, leaking plumbing, rotten floors and so on.”
She claims the building is a health hazard. Many pupils have come out in hives due to the lack of ventilation in the classrooms and complain regularly of headaches, she says.
“Ten children have asthma which is aggravated by the mould and damp. One child fell into a bucket catching rainwater in one of the classrooms. Children are constantly slipping on wet floors. There is no hot water and no heating in the toilets. Part of the storage heating has had to be shut off because the classroom was filling with smoke. What is the long-term damage being inflicted on our children’s health?”
She says the Department of Education gave the school €20,000 to improve conditions. “This was spent putting tar felt onto the roof to prevent slates from falling off a rotten roof into the playground – this had been a regular occurrence up to then. The roof is still rotten. Toilets which had been flooding were replaced but water is still seeping up through the floor. Wire mesh has been fitted to the inside of the windows in the main building to prevent glass blowing in on top of the children but this is now a fire hazard in itself. Leaks to the roof and windows in the prefabs have been repaired but new leaks keep appearing. The Department seem to think that a few repairs here and there will make this a fit building for our children to be in but it will not.”
The parents’ association say nothing short of a new school will solve the situation. It would cost €600,000 to build a new facility - the site is there already.
“We are trying to arrange a meeting with the Minister for Education to stress the need to fastrack a new school for Eglish.
“We won’t pull our children out and send them to another school because the education received by our children in Eglish School is second to none. The teachers even give up their time four evenings per week to provide a free homework club for our children. Parents have done all we can to meet the Department half-way. The parents of this school, past and present, have bought the two-and-three-quarter acre field behind it - there is plenty of space to build a new school building.We are also looking into fundraising in order to apply for planning permission ourselves. We now appeal to the Minister for Education to find the money for our new school building.”
