More than €630,000 a year is being spent by the Department of Education on temporary school accommodation in Clare.
32 temporary structures are currently in place in this county.
Details released to the Oireachtas by Education Minister Norma Foley following a parliamentary question tabled by the Labour party show it’s costing the Department €632,000 a year in rental costs for 32 separate temporary accommodation facilities and portacabins in Clare schools alone.
Minister Foley says 28 of those structures are in primary schools across the county, with 4 being in secondary schools here.
Only five counties have more temporary structures in place in their primary schools than in Clare – they’re Cork, Dublin, Galway, Meath and Tipperary.
While the spend in Clare is the lowest in Munster, the Department is still forking out around €12,000 per week just to upkeep portacabins in schools in this county.
The Department says it’s ‘sometimes necessary’ to make use of temporary accommodation to ensure every child has a school place.
It says there are 1,300 school building projects in the pipeline across various stages of planning, design and construction – including a number here in Clare.
