Dublin 15 schools to be shut down over structural defects

fly_agaric

A Shaved Duck? wrote: »

Clearly a lot of civil servants reading this thread.

Im not suggesting that there is an infinite pot of cash nor that there isnt blame on both sides.

It does seem that making the point that the department responsible is partly culpable here is pretty unpopular.

If you lads are satisifed that the same lackluster approach to regulation is applied because its deemed to expensive or how can we expect people to do their jobs..then your entitled to your view.

It doesnt change the fact that schools had to temporarily closed down as the system is still broken..but sure carry regardless there is always a grey area or excuse.

Can only speak for myself, but I'm not satisfied. The whole thing is pretty disgraceful.
However, if the Dept. doesn't actually have the staff (or money) to do the task properly, it is set up for failure from the start irrespective of whether people in there are doing their job or not.

I am working in the public sector but not education, so don't know exactly what is going on there but this sort of failure is a fairly regular occurrence across public and private sector in Ireland for some reason. If it was as easy as incompetents failing, well we could just hire someone else and fix it but the root of it seems to go a bit deeper than that (edit: its cultural IMO, that is why when you get old enough/live here long enough, you see very similar sorts of scandals and failures recur again and again).

LorelaiG

The parents voted that the schools remain closed because they weren't guaranteed that they were safe, as a result, children were bussed to different accommodation off site this morning. I'm not a parent of kids in the school so no idea where they've been moved to during the works. If I find out I'll update.

deiseindublin

What a mess.

miamee

LorelaiG wrote: »

The parents voted that the schools remain closed because they weren't guaranteed that they were safe, as a result, children were bussed to different accommodation off site this morning. I'm not a parent of kids in the school so no idea where they've been moved to during the works. If I find out I'll update.

From what I understand both schools were to continue housing the smaller children on their ground floors with older children being sent off-site. That is still up in the air for St. Lukes after they had parents visit on Wednesday, not sure if it's the same for TET. For one school they are walking to the nearby Le Chéile secondary school to use empty classrooms there and for the other they are to be bussed to another school though I can't remember where that one is, possibly Ongar.

Former Former

There's a story in the Irish Times today about redevelopment of flats on Dominic Street. The project is two years behind schedule and is now going to cost €39 million, 10 million more than originally planned, to deliver 72 social housing apartments. That's €540,000 per apartment, cost price, on a site which the city already owned. That's incredible.

So there's an example of bad public sector project management and budgeting. How the timeline and costs have spiralled like that should be explained and would appear to land squarely in the lap of the city council.

A construction company doing a shoddy job that can't be detected without actually taking the wall down? No, that's on the builders.

advertsfox

miamee wrote: »

From what I understand both schools were to continue housing the smaller children on their ground floors with older children being sent off-site. That is still up in the air for St. Lukes after they had parents visit on Wednesday, not sure if it's the same for TET. For one school they are walking to the nearby Le Chéile secondary school to use empty classrooms there and for the other they are to be bussed to another school though I can't remember where that one is, possibly Ongar.

Correct, our girl is in TETNS Junior Infants and has went in the last 2 days. There is no support beams in her classroom at all, the media who were showing all the scaffolding outside and in didn't mention that the pictures were from two different schools. TETNS is not as near as bad as portrayed but St. Lukes is.

LorelaiG

advertsfox wrote: »

Correct, our girl is in TETNS Junior Infants and has went in the last 2 days. There is no support beams in her classroom at all, the media who were showing all the scaffolding outside and in didn't mention that the pictures were from two different schools. TETNS is not as near as bad as portrayed but St. Lukes is.

How can you be sure of that.

advertsfox

LorelaiG wrote: »

How can you be sure of that.

All parents were invited up to the school on Wednesday before it was due to open so we got to seen the classroom and hallways. RTE also had a video with picture stills showing outside of TETNS but the following pictures they showed of the corridors were not the same, St. Paul's has a similar style layout I believe.

It's such a big mess but I'm glad the kids are back. It's still not ideal, none of it is but don't think there is a perfect solution here.