No Excuse Now For Government Inaction on Tyrrelstown Schools and Community Centre

Tired of waiting around for Fianna Fail and the Greens to provide basic facilities, Twinlite have gone ahead and got planning to build two permanent schools and a community/recreation centre for Tyrrelstown.

You may recall I held a public meeting in support of the initial application for this last July (Ref No. F08A/0787). It was opposed by Paul Donnelly of Sinn Fein and Joe Higgins and Ruth Coppinger of the Socialist Party on the basis that the application was by a private developer. This despite the fact that the Department of Education put all such building projects out to tender to private builders.

The application by Twinlite follows many years of frustration and broken promises by the government to fund permanent schools in Tyrrelstown. Based on the Department of Education’s own blueprints, they intend to build two sixteen classroom schools with separate playgrounds, resource rooms, admin/staff rooms etc., along with a shared two storey community centre/ general purpose hall (area 1252 sq.m) including conference / meeting rooms, offices and changing rooms together with ballparks and landscape works on an area of 6.91 acres. They have offered to sell the schools to the Department at cost price or to rent them at cost to the Department on a long-term lease.

This is about as good a deal as the Department will get in a long time but nothing will happen unless the Fianna Fail Green Government provides the capital funding needed to buy the school. The Department have indicated they do not have a mechanism to lease the building at cost price. Meanwhile the areas two schools languish in prefabs on the side of Powerstown Road and the local gaelscoil has not even got a site, let alone a building. With gaelscoileanna already in Coolmine and Dunboyne, a gaelscoil in Tyrrelstown could provide sufficient numbers for a second level gaelscoil in Dublin West.

Agus na toghcháin áitiúla ag teannadh linn, tá an dóchas ann go mbeidh gníomhaíocht ar an ceisteanna seo i mBaile an Tirialaigh agus ní amháin geallúintí folamha Fhianna Fáil agus an Chomhaontais Ghlais.