Department criticised over "unacceptable" response to Athlone school's needs

An Athlone councillor has described as "completely unacceptable" the Department of Education's response to a local national school's request for extra help in order to comply with Covid-19 requirements.

The facilities at Clonbonny National School attracted national attention today (Wednesday) when RTE's Midlands correspondent Ciaran Mullooly tweeted a photo of a garden shed which will be used as an isolation space for children displaying symptoms of the virus.

Pupils at the school returned to class today but principal Joan Donnelly told RTE that 37 children were sharing a classroom, even though there is not a distance of one metre between the desks.

She said there had been a lack of assistance in helping the school come up with additional space, and she was also disappointed that a request for an extra special needs assistant had been turned down.

Local Independent councillor Jamie Moran said the situation was not good enough.

"These are the type of problems that the Department of Education should have been addressing since the start of the summer," said Cllr Moran

"The Minister and her Department will have to step up to the mark here and provide the school with the necessary facilities so that all the children in the school are properly looked after.

"There has to be a better solution than a garden shed, and the Minister needs to get personally involved in the case and listen to the concerns of the school and the parents so that the matter can be sorted quickly.

"The lack of assistance in helping the school to find additional space is simply not good enough. We owe it to all those returning to our schools to provide a safe environment for all," he concluded.

There has been a lot of online commentary today on the garden shed that will be used for isolation purposes should pupils experience Covid symptoms.

Here were a few of the tweets, earlier today, about the issue: