“We feel abandoned”: Roscommon school with 300 children still closed

The principal of a large primary school in Ballaghaderreen, which is still without power since last Friday, said he and the school community “feel abandoned” as 325 children and staff are forced to remain at home.

Principal of St. Attracta’s National School, Noel Loftus, believes there is no urgency on behalf of the Department of Education to assist the school in addressing the electricity outage at the school in the wake of Storm Éowyn.

“I feel let down that the Department isn’t applying a sufficient pressure on the powers-that-be to identify schools as critical pieces of infrastructure. Nobody has contacted us. We feel abandoned.

“There has to be structured, systematic input to support schools to keep it open. That deep scar that was left by Covid in schools and children’s education, we all said we’d learn from that and that the schools would never be able to close again,” he said.

He said that most of the power has been restored to the town of Ballaghaderreen but the school is on a line that has yet to be repaired.

“We are being told that we are one of 13 customers on a particular line to be reconnected by 9 a.m., Tuesday, February 4th. What people forgot is that we are not a house. We are a school community of over 330 people. What other village with 330 people is still abandoned in Ireland?

“I can get a pizza in Ballaghaderreen but you can’t send your child to school. We are talking about a state funded school. We are talking about a fundamental service.

“There is no communication. I have got this ESB app. That’s the only communication I have and then you can’t make any plans because the restoration times keep changing,” he said, adding that the previous estimated restoration time was on Tuesday.

Mr Loftus said a call out was made to source a generator and while one is being made available, there is still a major challenge ahead. “The generator needs a changeover switch to allow the generator talk to the school’s electrical system instead of talking to the mains. It cannot be sourced at the moment, an electrician has ordered 15 of them but it could be up to a month before they arrive.” 

He said he is try to manage the crisis as best he can, communicating clearly to staff and parents on a daily basis to ensure online learning is working. “We are doing online learning but that is only second best. We learned that from Covid, there is no point pretending otherwise."

The principal said there were significant ramifications with the school remaining closed.

“I’ve had to cancel thousands of euro worth of school lunches that we give out free to vulnerable kids. We provide breakfast to a cohort of students. We provide meals and lunch to two thirds of the school. None of this happening. The afterschool homework club is cancelled.

“We had the National Council for Special Education coming this week for the assessment of additional resources for vulnerable children, cancelled. We had therapy sessions for children, cancelled,” he said.

Mr Loftus has circulated a message to all parents, pleading with them to “please contact your local politicians to help us get our school reopened".