Decision day approaches for new secondary school plan

This Thursday, February 1, is decision day for plans for a new purpose-built secondary school in Moate.

Westmeath County Council is due to announce a final verdict on the ambitious proposal for a new 1,000 pupil school building on-site, which would see all current premises barring the St Joseph's building, the oldest, and the one facing the road, knocked as part of a phased construction project to provide new state-of-art accommodation spanning 9,600 square metres.

Back in July, Moate Community School Board of Management, the applicants, learned that the local authority wanted more data on aspects of the application to allow a verdict on the project to be announced.

This covered the need for more detail on the visual impact of the development from St Brigid's NS, a protected structure, Active Travel measures, traffic layout and demolition/construction work and hours, all of which was supplied before Christmas.

Judged significant further information by the council, this meant a new notice had to be erected on-site and a new advertisement of the planning notice placed in a local newspaper.

When details of the new school plan were first revealed last year, principal Tom Lowry expressed the hope that work would start on the new build in the next academic year, saying that the school had moved to a student cohort of 1,200 – close to 900 secondary and 300 in third-level in recent times.

In a letter submitted by the principal with the planning documents, he stated that the Department of Education has set the long-term projected secondary school enrolment at 1,000 students and has “sanctioned building works to meet this need”.

The construction of the proposed development would be carried out in two phases, and this would “allow for minimal disruption of the normal operations of the school” and minimise the need for additional temporary accommodation buildings.

Existing school buildings would be demolished and construction of a three-storey extension would happen in the first phase, along with the PE hall and temporary building, the application revealed, while the second element would comprise of remaining parts of the extension and decanting of the existing St Joseph’s building or the old boarding school into the new expansion.