Inver College project urgent – Cllr Carthy

A CARRICKMACROSS councillor has urged officials in the Department of Education to come to Inver College and see for themselves how urgently the school needs repair works and the new extension promised.

“It’s like everything else,” Cllr Colm Carthy (SF) told the most recent CMETB meeting, “If they’d come out of their office in Dublin, they would know what needs to be done.”

A 2,696 square metre two-storey extension for Inver College is at the detailed design stage.

While the extension will include a special education needs unit, four specialist classrooms, two SET rooms and a large general purpose hall, the renovation of the 67-year-old part of the school will provide three new classrooms.

Colm Carthy asked Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board to impart on the Department of Education the dire state of the school building and to earmark the secondary school as a “priority project”.

He wants the Department to understand how bad weather leads to leaks and other safety issues for staff and pupils “come September”.

Director of Organisation Support and Development at CMETB, Karen McBride, said they are “waiting on the Department’s technical team to come on site for us to present the state of the building to them”.

Cllr Carthy pointed to how the Minister for Education, Hildegarde Naughton, was only “days in office” when she came to view Inver College but her aides have not seen the state of the old building for themselves.

Acknowledging an application for funding as “significant”, Cllr Carthy said he hopes key Department staff will “take one look at it and see it’s urgent".

“As it has been for a number of years,” the local rep added.