In 2005 Scoil Mhuire in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim took in its first two Polish students. It was the year after the Accession Treaty which allowed 10 Eastern European states to join the EU. The trickle of immigrants from these countries seeking a better life in Ireland would become a flood in the following years.
At the time, though, nobody had anticipated such an influx. “I didn’t know how we were going to cope with two Polish students with no English,” said principal Caroline Healy. She laughs now at the novelty of it.
Today Scoil Mhuire has 505 pupils for the new school year of whom almost half are foreign born or have foreign-born parents. There are 34 nationalities represented, among them 69 pupils of Polish origin, 43 Ukrainians, 18 Lithuanians, 10 Romanians, nine Kurds and eight Syrians.
Scoil Mhuire is an amalgamation of the old girls school (Campus 1) and the old boys school (Campus 2) which became a single co-ed school in 2013. The two schools are 400m apart.
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When this writer attended the boys school in the late 1970s and 1980s Carrick-on-Shannon was a small town of 2,000 people with about 250 students between both schools. Now the population is more than 4,000 and the most recent census revealed a 10 per cent increase in the population of Leitrim since 2016.
The notion then that my little primary school would one day become a melting pot of nationalities from across the world would have seemed absurd. When I was growing up, Leitrim was a county people left, not settled in.
The school numbers are twice what they were in my days, yet most of the classrooms are still the same. A prefab that was built in the late-1970s as a temporary structure is still there. Corridors have been subdivided into rooms. Prefabs have been built on in Campus 1, but at the expense of outside space.
The expansion of the pupil numbers has put an intolerable strain on the existing school. A Department of Education technical report carried out in August 2021 identified that a large number of classrooms in both campuses were on average half (41sq m) the size of the standard primary school classroom size of 80sq m.
During the 6th class “graduation” this year parents had to stand outside the general purpose (GP) room because there was no space for them.
Both sixth classes this year will have 36 students each. Of the 16 classes, 12 have more than 30 pupils including every class above third class. Ideally the school would have 24 classrooms.
The technical report identified fire safety hazards, roof leaks, a possible asbestos leak and the absence of emergency lighting. It concluded that there would not be space on either of the existing campuses to build a school of sufficient size for the town. A greenfield site is needed. Currently Leitrim County Council is looking at a number of sites in anticipation of the go-ahead from the State.
Ms Healy said: “The whole situation for what we are dealing with is totally unsuitable and against every health and safety regulation under the sun. We need a new school building, we have substandard classrooms. It is just not fit for purpose.”
Minister for Education Norma Foley met the school management and local TDs Martin Kenny, Frank Feighan and Marc MacSharry two years ago to discuss a new school, yet nothing has been done to date.
Campus 1 has a sign outside, “Minister, build our new school now!” The senior infants have sent postcards to the Minister showing their ideas for a new school design. Even if a new school was ordered tomorrow, they would most likely only enjoy the benefits of it in 6th class. The average primary school takes six years from inception to completion.
A social media campaign has been started by Louise Murray, a member of the board of management of Scoil Mhuire, on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook. Her two sons Eli (13), who is now in secondary school, and Ruben (11) will not enjoy the benefits of a new school, but the fight, for her, is worth pursuing.
“I believe in this school. So in a nutshell the school has so much inclusion but no provision. There are so many stories of inclusivity within the school reflecting the diversity across the Irish population in general, but also evidence of the lack of capital investment outside of the main population centres.”
She concedes that Carrick-on-Shannon has benefited from Government investment, but there’s a limit. “We have had great support locally, but it hasn’t helped that we have no minister here.”
The Department of Education said €4.4 billion in capital investment would be spent on new school buildings between now and 2025. “The priority of the department continues to be the provision of required additional school places to meet demographic requirements as well as for children with special educational needs.
“The department is considering the optimum way forward for Scoil Mhuire, Carrick-on-Shannon following a technical report on the condition of the building and will be in further contact with the school patron in due course regarding the future of the school and its application for the Additional School Accommodation [ASA] scheme.”
