I thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for allowing me to raise on the Adjournment the important question of the provision of a new vocational education committee school at Summerhill in Mallow, County Cork. The present school, known as Davis College, was built in 1943 and extensions were added in 1960, 1968 and 1973. The present capacity is 400, the total enrolment is 485 and the projected enrolment in the immediate years ahead is 500.
In October 1994, Cork County vocational education committee announced that the Department of Education had sanctioned the building of a new school to cater for the projected enrolment of 500 students. At present, due to the increase in numbers the school has had to rent accommodation from Dairygold Co-op, but the rented building is not adjoining the school campus. It fragments the school. It also-raises safety concerns for students and staff who must travel between the two sites.
The condition of the main building of Davis College is substandard and major expenditure is required to maintain the rotting windows and doors which present a safety and security risk. The narrow stairs and corridors and partition classrooms with a single narrow exit also add to the safety risk. The prefabricated classrooms have been condemned by an architect in the Department of Education, but despite that classes must be conducted in those primitive, insecure, damp and unsafe structures.
There is a total lack of adequate, safe storage space for valuable equipment, such as TVs, videos, camcorders or for students' projects which they must take home despite the Department's directive that they should be retained until after the junior certificate results are issued.
The staffroom is totally inadequate and Dickensian. Office accommodation is not acceptable or suitable. The school library is housed in a leaking prefabricated room. The toilet facilities are inadequate for the current demand of staff and students.
I request the Minister of State to ensure that building of the new school commences immediately to meet the needs of the students and staff to provide them with acceptable accommodation and equipment in these latter years of the 20th century.