Judge for yourself!

I came home from holidays to get the good news from a constituent that the council had turned down a plan to build a 5 storey apartment block in town. I was pleased as I believe that making observations on the planning process is very difficult for those who feel threatened by the prospect of over development and I was pleased that the council came down on her side.

Imagine my surprise when I bought my local paper, was this news mentioned? No, but what was exercising someone’s and I say someone because the story is not attributed to any journalist, on the front page? Why the application to build a new court house in Wexford that comprises of a basement, and 2 subsequent floors on top. The article criticises the OPW not just for the scale of the extension to the former Tate School where the court house will be located, but also the location and design of the new library in town.

I smiled as I read how criminals could consult in luxurious surroundings with their lawyers and how could this happen when patients could be on trolleys and pupils in prefabs and the local garda station remains cramped! The article ignored the reality that Wexford’s present courts are inadequate and not fit for purpose as it is. The picture used to illustrate the article seems to be part produced from plans however while size and scale are the same, the finish as lodged by the OPW is substantially better.

The article mentions child abusers, criminals, thugs, killers in true tabloid fashion but misses the point that Wexford Court is more likely to deal with other type of cases such as small claims, civil disputes, traffic offences, in camera family cases where the judge is deciding on the future of children or property or commercial cases as much as it is likely to deal with criminality. Implicit in the article is the suggestion that this is money wasted on the dregs of society. The writer doesn’t understand that there is a lot more going on in the court than the processing of the local ne’er do wells to the Midlands Prison.

A court is someone’s working environment and it’s a nonsense to think that courts are for criminals only. At present Wexford Court has no provision for victim support, IT for close circuit interviewing of children, family law cases that are becoming an increasingly large part of their workload, poor provision for holding prisoners, while the court staff work in stuffy and cramped conditions. Does the paper actually believe that it is madness to give a public servant a decent working environment, I wonder? Regularly consultations between client and legal team take place in the corridors of Wexford Court which is also the county council building. So anyone in to pay their car tax will at present rub shoulders with the thugs and child abusers that concern the local paper or possibly over hear their neighbours sorting out the final details of ending their marriage.

While the article dwells on criminals who are of course dealt with, it makes no mention of victims and their needs. Its only a few months since a victim of a sexual assault in Kerry suffered the ignominy of sitting in court close to here assailant while neighbours shook his hand. Its not good enough anymore that this can happen. If courts have to be rebuilt with secure areas to keep prisoners, decent working conditions for prison officers and gardaí and to afford witnesses security then what’s wrong with that? Last year I photographed a prison van parked illegally outside my own workplace, presumably because of lack of parking space at the court 1 mile away!

In terms of height the building is no taller than the office from which the local paper that thundered against the court house is printed! The only complaints I’ve received about the court service are that there aren’t enough judges to deal speedily with the workload on a given day.
While I entirely accept the criticism of the writer that “Planners have allowed far too much offensive development in Wexford”, its more the reason to highlight in the local media when planners actually do call it right by blocking real high rise in town.

PreFFabs sprout in the south east!

This week’s Wexford People carries an indictment of any Government TD who met any school board of management and reassured them that their school construction plan would be prioritised. €900K is spent each year in Co Wexford alone on renting prefabs by FF & the Greens. In my time I’ve spoken at meetings and indeed had to listen to the steady line of spin from FF TD’s with their spin carefully honed by the Department. In the past I’ve heard how construction was halted by everything from Foot and Mouth to 9/11. Needless to say the excuse has changed but the effect on school communities is still the same, more delays.

7 years ago, I served on the BOM of my children’s school. Then we were cynically set up during an election campaign by Fianna Fail and then discarded after the election. This leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. I well understand how any parent or teacher feels about prefabs. Lets look at the Wexford Town figures; 3 schools, CBS secondary, Kennedy Park & Scoil Mhuire all have prefabs that set the taxpayer back over €100K per annum. In the surrounding parishes Barntown, Piercestown, Screen, Castlebridge and Crossabeg the prefabs there cost even more; over €110K! about 2 years ago an FOI request from me to the department revealed that rather than planning to get rid of prefabs FF and the Greens were planning to hold on to them as they compiled a database of prefabs in Ireland’s schools
One local principal says she wants a building not a prefab and is livid at the revelation that so much is being spent on prefabs. Its my view that the figures revealed are only the tip of the ice berg as it doesn’t include the cost of heating such energy inefficient buildings, cost of planning permission applications, construction of these glorified hen houses nor the cost of prefabs that were purchased by schools. It only applies to rental! The pictures on this page are all taken around the county at different primary schools, some are on the list published by the department, some are not.
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As Co Wexford TLC chairperson I worked with the INTO in the county on this issue. TLC was set up to campaign on the issue of school building. I found INTO on the ground in Wexford very effective at raising issue concerning the basic working conditions of teachers. This experience coloured my view of teaching colleagues and I strongly feel we’ve more that unites us than divides us.An in depth survey of all 100 schools in the county was taken and the results were shocking. Many of the schools on that list made no progress towards construction whatsoever. Kennedy Park, New Ross CBS and my own, where at second level we were promised a gym and associated classrooms along with the Asperger’s unit. The unit arrived courtesy of a fine prefab and no prizes for guessing that nothing else happened! If another survey was conducted now I believe that the result would be broadly the same. What’s more any incoming government will have their work cut out trying to tackle the backlog in school buildings even if the forecast is that we need 100,000 extra school spaces by 2020. .
I wonder about the capacity of the building industry to build that many schools but never doubt the capacity of FF or Green public reps to talk up their inertia and to pull the wool over the eyes of school communities