Kildare school waits on vital used prefabs

A secondary school in Kildare is waiting on temporary accommodation to come from another local school to be able to accommodate 30 children who are on its waiting list.

However, local councillor Paula Mulroe is fearful that “additional bureaucracy and red tape” threatens the delivery of the temporary accommodation, and could prevent the children on the waiting list at St Farnan’s Seconadary School, Prosperous from getting a school place.

“There are 30 kids on the waiting list for a school place for the 2025/26 school term only four months away and the school is waiting on temporary accommodation from (St Paul’s) Monasterevin in order to fulfil the demand for August/September intake,” cllr Mulroe said. St Paul’s have the surplus on site on their old campus, ever since the new school formally opened on the Athy Road last September.

She added: “St Farnan’s and other Kildare and Wicklow Enterprise and Training Board (KWETB) schools do not deal directly with the Department of Education so there is another layer of administration because they have to go through KWETB first with any decisions.

“In the case of St Farnan’s the fact that they have planning granted for a new building means that any decisions to place temporary accommodation on the existing site must go through KWETB, architects, and this can take a considerable amount of time.

“But more importantly, it leaves the school with an ever-decreasing window of opportunity to get the classrooms approved, on-site and built.

“The last time a temporary or modular structure was erected on the site it took six to eight months to build.

“We are now into April and there is no indication of a decision or movement on the temporary fix for the classrooms. There are specific requirements in terms of the resources that the rooms must fill, for instance, one of them needs to be a science lab.

“There is limited capacity in some classrooms given the nature of the activities such as science and engineering and it may affect subject choices for kids but also could impact mandatory subjects.

“The school is currently operating at 98.5 per cent capacity and will reach 700 pupils in September.”

Cllr Mulroe’s party colleague Cllr Claire O’Rourke, who sits on the KWETB Board, outlined the situation in St Farnan’s at a board meeting on Tuesday 25 March.

KWETB responded that they were waiting on the Department of Education to move and were hoping for a response from them as soon as possible, but they admitted that correspondence from the department can take up to two months.

Local TD Deputy Aidan Farrelly called on the department to respond as quickly as possible.