40,000 children being taught in prefabs

Posted on June 18, 2008 at 05:21 PM

"One of the first things that strikes you about primary schools in Ireland today are the prefabs. The clutter of prefabs in the school yard, the prefab extension or sometimes the entire school is a prefab," the Labour Leader Deputy Eamon Gilmore told the Dáil this morning. He was raising the issue of prefabs, school buildings and the downturn in the construction sector during Leaders' Questions in the Dáil this morning.

Addressing the Chamber Eamon explained how our Spokesperson on Education, Ruairi Quinn TD, has been denied information on the number of prefabs in use in our primary schools. Up until recently Deputy Quinn has been told the information has not been available to the department.

Since then we have had a new Education Minister, Batt O'Keefe who has provided the information and it is a shocking indictment on facilities in our primary sector.

It revealed how:

• An estimated 40,000 children are being taught in prefabs in more than 800 schools across the country. Almost 100 schools did not return the survey so these figures could be even higher.
• There are 2,235 prefabs in more than 800 primary schools throughout the country.
• 1,372 of those are being used for mainstream classes, 552 are being used as a resource room and 72 are in use for special needs education.

There is no argument that that use of prefabs may have been necessary in emergency situations but they have no become a permanent part of the education fabric in this country.

Given these figures and given that FAS is reporting that up to 65,000 jobs could be lost in the construction sector before the end of 2009 Deputy Eamon Gilmore put it to the Taoiseach that there is a compelling case for an emergency construction programme to upgrade our school building and enable the use of prefabs to be phased out.

Tagged with Education