Schools Building Projects
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel

I thank the Minister for being here. I really appreciate it. I take this opportunity to formally congratulate her on her new role. I was able to do so informally, but it is important to also do it formally.
What I am raising today will not be new to the Minister because I happened to bump into her at the Young Scientist exhibition and took the opportunity to speak to her about the situation in the school at the Curragh. Of course, I have been in email contact with her office on an ongoing basis.
It is coincidental that the final Commencement matter I tabled before Christmas related to the issue I am raising today, although it concerned the new build, that is, the new school that is going on the Magee Barracks site in Kildare town, which will cater for the students of the Curragh, Newbridge and Kildare. As we know, that project is at the tender stage. We are certainly hoping it will receive priority from the Department. Since the Commencement debate in question, things have become very bad at the existing school building in the Curragh. It is an unusual situation because it is on Department of Defence land, and the Department of Defence is a co-patron, along with Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board, KWETB. This school was originally built for 140 students, but it currently has 300. That is because, with the pressure on the existing secondary schools in Newbridge and Kildare, a decision was made and the board of management of the Curragh Community College was asked to expand its capacity to take in the extra numbers before the new school was built. This was in view of the fact that the new school is going to be built in two stages. Unfortunately, things have gone from bad to worse in the existing building. The school is over capacity. The facilities are not in the condition that anyone would want to see either the students or teachers in. For example, there is a staff room that accommodates ten people but there are almost 40 staff members at this stage.
There have been numerous communications from the staff and many from students as well. The week before last, I went to the school at the behest of some of the teachers and was appalled by what I saw. Three of the classrooms cannot be used because of damp and mould. The issue is that the roof has been leaking, so the school has made an application for emergency works for a new roof. This absolutely has to be expedited as soon as possible. At the moment, the school is shipping fifth and sixth year students to an alternative location a few miles away. It was difficult enough to get transport from Kildare and Newbridge to the Curragh Camp, but we are now faced with another logistical situation in terms of pupils and teachers having to move between two campuses, which are several miles apart. As the Minister can imagine, buses, taxis and so on have to be arranged.
I particularly want to mention an email I received from Alannah Dunne, Ali McGannon and Libby Christie. They speak about neglect, broken promises and ongoing safety concerns. As students, they say that everything about the place has declined rapidly. I want to be very clear. The staff of the school are excellent. The atmosphere of support for one another between the whole school community is top class. The principal, Nessa Doyle, and her team are doing incredible work with students who now come from a much wider area. However, what they are going through at the moment is shocking. I hope the Minister can give us some up-to-date information on this.

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Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20