Cork students of country’s largest secondary locked out of their on-campus playing pitches
CorkmanA thousand students on the largest school campus in the country are facing into another school year with no playing field thanks to Department of Education inaction, local councillors have said.
The issue at Carrigtwohill Community School was discussed at this week’s meeting of Cork County Council in a motion put forward by the Cobh Municipal District, which called on the council to write to the department expressing its dissatisfaction over the department’s lack of action on the unopened playing field on the campus.
Cllr Anthony Barry told the meeting that Cork County Council granted permission to the Department of Education in February last year to carry out works to upgrade the entrance to the playing field but nothing has happened since. “The locks are still on that gate and I think it's criminal to see the fact that there's a four-acre field inside the largest school campus in the country and it's not available to the students,” he said.
Cllr Sheila O’Callaghan said the Cobh Municipal District didn’t get a response when it wrote to the department about the issue and so the elected members decided to bring it before the full council.
“I was there at the official opening and it was the largest school campus project that had ever been undertaken and come to fruition. But to see it without one of the basic necessities of a playing field is very disheartening … it's just very distressing for the community who were expecting this great campus and to have it have all the bells and whistles,” she said.
Cllr Dominic Finn agreed with his colleagues. “It’s an awful shame that we have the best education facility in Munster and to think that the children have to be bussed out to play sports in this day and age when we have the opportunity to put a pitch there. We certainly need a response as quickly as possible from the Department of Education on this and we need immediate action,” he said.
Cllr Patrick Mulcahy is a member of the Cork Education and Training Board, which is the patron and management body of Carrigtwohill Community School. He said there is “high frustration” that a school with nearly 1,200 students has no grass playing area. He added that a number of parliamentary questions have been submitted about the issue but the responses have been “very vague and not up to scratch at all from a department standard.”
The Carrigtwohill Community School first opened in 2016 and moved into a new, state-of-the-art building on a €40m campus off the town’s Station Road in February 2024. Located 10 km east of Cork city, Carrigtwohill is growing rapidly with predictions the population could reach 10,000 by 2030.
Cork County Council will now write to the Department of Education about the playing field.