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Education board to lodge €19m application

June 5, 2014

The Cork Education and Training Board (ETB) has confirmed it plans to lodge a planning application within weeks for three new schools in Carrigaline as part of a €19m investment in a new education campus.

The new schools — a gaelscoil, a second-level gaelcholáiste and a Sonas Special Junior Primary School — will cater for more than 1,000 pupils when they are completed and opened by 2017.

But the Cork ETB also announced yesterday that it will open a gaelcholáiste in a temporary building in the town in September 2015 in advance of the construction of the permanent building.

“Negotiations are at an advanced stage to secure suitable temporary accommodation in Carrigaline and there is no doubt that a gaelcholáiste will be opened by the ETB in Carrigaline in September 2015,” Cork ETB chief executive Ted Owens said.

Enrolment for the new second-level school will open soon and parents of prospective first-year students — students who are due to finish primary school education in June 2015 — will be contacted shortly to facilitate their enrolment in the gaelcholáiste.

Cork ETB will be patron of the 500-pupil 4,800sq m gaelcholáiste, which will have 24 general classrooms as well as specialist accommodation and a PE hall.

Project planning and preparation for the new education campus has been under way since a 21-acre site at Ballinrea was bought a number of years ago — the consultants for the project are Cork company Kelly Barry O’Brien Whelan.

Mr Owens said consultation with local groups had been ongoing throughout that time.

He accepted the preparatory work for an education investment of this scale had taken time and stressed that it is now “full steam ahead” on the project.

“Cork ETB is extremely excited about this project and is looking forward to working with our partners to develop a state-of-the-art education campus for Carrigaline,” he said.

The Cork ETB gaelcholáiste is one of three new second-level schools planned in Carrigaline, after the Department of Education approved the Edmund Rice Schools Trust and multi-denominational body Educate Together as patrons of two others following local consultations.

Both those new schools are scheduled to open in 2016 and plans are being advanced by local groups to secure sites and buildings with the help of the Department of Education, and to develop policies with parents of prospective students.

In addition, a major extension to Carrigaline Community School is due to be ready for occupation during the next school year.

Mr Owens wished the patrons of the two proposed new schools well as they advance with their projects.

He said the Department of Education is of the view that such is the population of Carrigaline and the city’s southern suburbs that the provision of all these new schools is justified.

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