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Irish Examiner

Department of Education accused of 'disgraceful behaviour' over refusal of sports pitch for Cork school

A Cork school with more than 1,800 pupils has been left with no grass pitch, despite land being earmarked for it. Cork County Council is urging the Department of Education to rectify the issue at Carrigtwohill Community School and open the designated three-acre site for school sports. The planning application made by the department in 2019 originally included the grass pitch, but when a revised application was later submitted, it had disappeared from the project. Carrigtwohill-based Fine Gael councillor Anthony Barry said it was subsequently classed by the department as "a flood attenuation area". The Department of Education, in replies to questions from then-Fine Gael TD David Stanton, said it was never intended to develop the site for the use of the school community. 'Eventually, last year the then-minister for education responded to calls by the school community to use the site as designated in the original planning application and in the County Development Plan as a playing field. This site was to be used under the remit of Carrigtwohill Community School,' Mr Barry said. However, following a recent parliamentary question by Fine Gael TD Noel McCarthy, the department reverted back to the decision not to allow the school use of the field. Mr Barry raised the issue at a Cobh Municipal District Council meeting, saying: 'In this day and age, surely we should be encouraging students at every opportunity to engage in physical outdoor activity and preventing the use of this area for this purpose is quite mind-boggling." He said hopefully 'commonsense will prevail' and new education minister Helen McEntee would sanction the use of the land as a pitch. 'Carrigtwohill is one of the fastest growing communities in the country and space of this nature is at a premium and quite simply cannot be left lie idle,' he added. Fianna Fáil councillor Dominic Finn, who is a teacher, described the situation as 'disgraceful behaviour', and added 'it's crazy' that children attending the massive campus have to travel elsewhere to use a grass pitch. Their colleagues also backed the motion to contact the department and put pressure on to have it opened for sports. Read More Cork County Council is only local authority without language policy for Gaeltacht housing