Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that the\nlevel of structural defects in schools across the State demands ‘urgent\naction’; adding that no school should have to lose school days due to\ninadequate building standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD spoke out after today\u2019s announcement that engineers\nhave identified structural flaws in 17 more school buildings, including 3 in\nDublin South West – Scoil Aoife Community National School (Citywest); Gaelscoil\nna Gi\u00faise; and Firhouse Educate Together. These schools require temporary works\nto be carried out in coming weeks in order to ensure that they are safe for\npupils and staff to return to in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe priority in all of these instances needs to be the safety and welfare of children, staff and the wider school community.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cThis appears to be an escalating problem, with schools which had previously passed an initial examination now having structural defects discovered, and it is a cause of huge concern.<\/p>
\u201cToday it was announced that engineers have identified structural flaws in 17 additional school buildings, including 3 in Dublin South West – Scoil Aoife Community National School (Citywest); Gaelscoil na Gi\u00faise; and Firhouse Educate Together.<\/p>
\u201cThis is on top of the 22 schools that were last year found to have serious structural defects, including Scoil Chaitl\u00edn Maude in Tallaght.<\/p>
\u201cIt is quite extraordinary that some of these schools that were completed as recently as 2016 and 2017, and even last year, are defective. There are huge questions that need be\u00a0answered as to why\u00a0there are such apparent defects in schools which have only just been opened and had their ribbons cut.<\/p>
\u201cThe Department and Western Building Solutions need to tell us if they feel there is any possibility that any further defects will be found in any other recently built school.<\/p>
\u201cParents and staff\u00a0need to be\u00a0assured and made fully confident that their school is now safe.<\/p>
\u201cAs with the\u00a0schools which had defects revealed in 2018, this again raises major questions regarding the quality of the work undertaken by contractors and the light touch approach to safety and\u00a0quality control by the Department, but also on a policy level, their procurement process.\u00a0 Parents are rightly asking how this\u00a0situation was\u00a0allowed to develop and how no one in authority called stop or carried out safety checks.<\/p>
\u201cI am calling for the Department’s independent review of Design and Build Procurement Model to be published as soon as possible, so that any future contracts for construction can be watertight, that there will be no defects,\u00a0and no pupil or school has to lose school days due to inadequate safety standards.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that the level of structural defects in schools across the State demands ‘urgent action’; adding that no school should have to lose school days due to inadequate building standards. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD spoke out after today\u2019s announcement that engineers have identified structural flaws in 17 more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,350],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3905,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions\/3905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}