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PLANNED SPECIAL CLASSES for students with autism at a school in Dublin 9 are facing potential delays amid a planning permission dispute centred around the use of a parish hall, affecting around a dozen pupils due to take up places.
Two autism classes had been due to take in students at Corpus Christi National School in Drumcondra at the start of the next school year.
Planning permission has been granted this week for building works to take place but the school believes that an appeal to An Bord Pleanála could mean it would be September by the time that construction on the hall to accommodate the classes begins.
The school apologised to parents earlier this week for the disappointment caused “to families and pupils who were preparing to begin the upcoming school year”.
One parent, whose daughter was meant to be taking up a place in September that was offered to her months ago, said it is “another situation where children with additional needs have been failed” in Ireland.
The matter is centred around the use of the parish hall for the classrooms. The parish hall previously was used by community groups but has not been open for use since March 2020, first due to Covid-19 and later due to fire safety concerns. A local movement has been campaigning for the hall to be reopened for community use.
In the school’s planning application in February, it detailed that it was requesting permission to convert the existing parish hall for education use, including external and internal building works to create new classrooms and facilities like toilets. It also plans to create five new fire escape doors.
Dublin City Council’s subsequent planner’s report in April said that some third-party submissions called for the community use function of the parish hall building to be retained.
The report noted that the land is subject to an objective in the Dublin City Development Plan to “protect and retain the Corpus Christi Parochial Hall as an important and necessary community amenity in Drumcondra”.
As such, the report said that Dublin City Council should seek additional information from the school about how the hall would also retain a community use, as well as some information regarding noise and traffic management.
The architects behind the project responded in May to confirm that the parish hall would be available for use after 3.30pm on weekdays and after 10am on weekends, as well as for full weekdays during school holidays.
They said that the reconfiguration works “have been designed in such a way so that both the proposed new classrooms and the hall can operate independently of each other”.
Local Dublin City Councillor Feljin Jose said the planning application would have benefited from engaging thoroughly with the question of community use from the outset.
Speaking to The Journal, he said it is important, if a site is mentioned in the Dublin City Development Plan, for planning applications to acknowledge that.
He also said that the timeline for the project was operating within a short timeframe in that it intended to have the classrooms ready six months after applying for planning permission, “especially when the hall has been closed for five years”.
He agreed that parents are now in a difficult position and said his “priority” is finding how temporary accommodation can be secured for the affected pupils.
In a letter earlier this week to parents and guardians seen by The Journal, the school’s Board of Management apologised to parents for the situation.
It said, while they were awaiting planning permission, the project management team had advised the Board that the developments would delay the commencement of the building work to the hall until September 2025 or later should the planning authority decision be appealed to an Bord Pleanála.
“The Board of Management understands that this delay will cause disappointment and we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to families and pupils who were preparing to begin the upcoming school year,” the Board wrote.
“Please be assured that we remain fully committed to the development of the autism classes and we will continue to keep the school community informed as the process progresses.
“The Board of Management has notified the Special Education Section of the Department of Education and the NCSE.”
Neither Dublin City Council nor the school responded to requests for comment from The Journal.
Rachel Lowry, one of the parents affected, told The Journal that the fact that parents were alerted to the situation with less than three months to go before the new school term starts has put families in a very difficult situation.
Rachel has a daughter who is five-and-a-half years old who was meant to be taking one of the places in September. She has already done three years in pre-schools and the Department of Education’s early-intervention sessions and will be ageing out in June.
“There’s absolutely nowhere for her to go after this,” Rachel said.
Rachel said parents were told in March that the plans were subject to building works but that they had hoped the infrastructure for the classes would be ready by at least late September or early October at the latest.
Rachel said that she has regularly driven past the school in recent weeks and that she had noticed that there “hadn’t been so much as a nail on a wall”.
Following the planning application online, she saw that Dublin City Council had requested additional information, and realised that “we could be in trouble here”.
“I had a feeling that a delay was coming,” she said.
Parents of children who were meant to be taking up the spaces in the new school years are now left worried about what they will do come September if the classrooms are not ready.
“I know for us, home tuition won’t work. Lucy wouldn’t tolerate someone coming into her home. Plus, home is her safe space. She shouldn’t have to have her education in her home, unless it suited her, which it doesn’t,” Rachel said.
“We’ll be in contact with the school regarding what their contingency plan is.
“Schools are closing in two and a half weeks. It’s been left so late in the day by all involved.”
Families and campaigners have been calling for the government to make sure that special education places are available for every child in the country who needs one.
A protest for “Equality in Education” outside Leinster House last weekend demanded the State fulfil its obligations to ensure access to education for all children.
Rachel is involved with the campaign to improve education service for pupils with additional needs, such as autism.
“It hurts from that perspective as well because we’re doing the meetings, we’re getting parents involved, we’re really, really trying to highlight this in meetings in the Dáil.
“We were in meetings Minister Moynihan last week, minister of state at the Department of Education. We’re really trying hard to highlight this and to put solutions in place to help the children coming up after us, because there has been decades of neglect in the sector.
She said the delay to the classes at her daughter’s prospective school “is another situation where children with additional needs have been failed”.
“We were delighted when we got the offer of the place but now it’s like we took about 22 steps back.”
This article has been updated to reflect that planning permission has been granted.
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