Parental anger over delays in the building of a much needed school in Laytown, Co Meath, came to a head this week when a farmer denied the Department of Education's claim that he'd agreed a deal to sell his land, writes Kathy Sheridan
Some things we have learned this week: the Department of Education can and does apply for planning permission for schools on land it does not own. And a landowner can, apparently, wake up one morning to find a site notice about a 1,900sq m school on his plot of land, without his prior knowledge or consent.
The department readily admits to the first but disputes the second. It insists that "terms were agreed [ with the landowner] in December". The landowner is adamant: "We came to no agreement whatsoever. Not even a map was drawn up." In fact, so adamant is the landowner that he is threatening to sue the department for claiming to The Irish Timesthat it had an agreement. The department is refusing to explain its stance, however, on the grounds of "commercial sensitivities".
The landowner, Jimmy Lyons, the fifth generation of his family to live and farm land in Laytown, Co Meath, and described by the local school principal Maurice Daly as "honourable and respectable", has moved from bemusement to fury. In a situation born of years of official neglect and in a pre-electoral cauldron, he believes that he has been scapegoated and made to appear grasping.
Is he grasping? It is a fact that he and his four siblings made €27.75 million from the sale of 65 acres of zoned farmland to developer Tom Durkin last May. So has he not done well enough? "I owned 8 per cent of that [ about €2 million after tax]. I farmed the land. I'm the only one who lived here . . . It's a handy spin to say 'didn't he do well enough out of it?'".
In the sale, he retained the 3½-acre plot from which he runs an upmarket farm shop business, across the road from his beachside home. The plot, separated by a hedge from the Durkin/education campus site, is key to a planned access road for the proposed new education campus. Negotiations, however, have stalled, and Lyons accuses certain bodies of trying to "steal" his land.
Yesterday, when informed that the department was claiming it had a deal, Lyons issued a statement drawn up with his solicitor to The Irish Times: "In late 2006, I met with the Department of Education on two occasions. Various negotiations took place. When an offer was made to me to purchase some of my land, these negotiations were never finalised. In late January/early February 2007, I became aware that certain misrepresentations had been made to me by the Department of Education in relation to these lands during the course of these negotiations. As a result, no agreement was concluded by me with the Department of Education for the sale of any of my land. Accordingly no contracts were signed."
IT'S HARDLY ANY wonder, then, that the parents of Laytown, Co Meath, became rattled again this week.
The context is all too familiar. A disastrously over-developed little area in desperate need of a new school. Parents up in arms (and not for the first time). Local politicians spinning furiously. A Government department scoring badly in communications, at best; at worst, misleading the people. Landowners grimly intent on maximising their assets.
Boards of management trying to hold their own in multi-million euro land deals.
This week's eruption in Laytown was a sequel to events in the dog days of August last, when the parents of 98 children due to start that month in Scoil Oilibheir Naofa, a "new" junior national school for infants to second class, discovered that there was no actual school for them.
Desperate measures finally saw 60 infants divided between two curtained-off areas (and two toilets) in the gym of the "senior" national school, while yet more of the playground of the increasingly dismal site was ceded to prefabs. The loss of the gym has meant no physical education, no choir practice or Irish dancing, no Nativity play or road safety talks or book fairs. And so it remains. Yet another two-storey prefab, due around Easter, is expected to release the gym for its original purpose - but at the price of a diminishing play area for 600 children.
Parental patience finally cracked this week when news broke that, despite repeated statements by the Minister for Education and the department that a 12-acre site owned by developer Tom Durkin had been acquired for a new school, the land had not been legally transferred.
NO ONE IS saying how this news leaked out. As local politicians tried to out-spin one another in their ardour to prove their pivotal involvement in the acquisition of the new school site (one even claimed to have witnessed the completion of the sale), the site notice suddenly appeared on Jimmy Lyons's hedge at the end of January.
The notice, on behalf of Scoil Oilibheir Naofa's board of management, was a planning application for a temporary 1,900 sq metre two-storey, 16-classroom junior school. (A permanent school is planned on the Durkin/education campus site for 2008.) Lyons assumed it was a mistake, that the notice should have been placed on the Durkin site a few metres on.
However, when he was allowed to view the planning application on February 16th, he was stunned to see that the entire building would fall within his plot of land (directly opposite his front door), with just nine car-parking spaces (out of 32) falling onto the Durkin parcel next to it. The applicants further certified that they owned the freehold title - permanent and absolute tenure - to this part of the 3½-acre plot and that they had purchased it from Lyons in 2006. Crucially, they also stated that they owned no other land beyond the temporary school site. In other words, although the department had not yet managed to complete the purchase of the school site proper from Tom Durkin, it was prepared to take over Jimmy Lyons's site, so appearing to be moving on the project.
Asked about this, a department spokeswoman insisted that "terms were agreed in December for the smaller parcel [ the Lyons plot], for a temporary school and later for access". And the rogue site notice? "In general, there is nothing to preclude anyone applying for planning permission once there is sufficient interest in a piece of land. For example, you often see a sale going through 'subject to planning permission'."
IN BOOMTOWN IRELAND, where school sites are up for negotiation as a developer's quid pro quo or simply for vast amounts of money, the Department of Education is up against it. This year, it is managing a programme to acquire 60 sites. Last year, it acquired 20, at a cost of €36 million. In 2005, it acquired 18 for €38 million. "I'm pointing this out to show that we don't 'steal' sites from anybody," said the spokeswoman. But acquiring them has been increasingly difficult, she added. "Planning can be an issue. The department will buy at normal market value, but as areas become more urbanised, it becomes more difficult to acquire suitable sites. You can't site a school 20 miles from a population centre."
Meanwhile, to complicate matters, councillors and officials at local level are often laying the groundwork for future site wars by appearing to favour some developers over others in the horse-trading.
Some Laytown locals believe that the educational and community quid pro quo on the 65-acre Durkin site was a good deal more demanding than that required of other developers in the area. Tom Durkin told The Irish Timesthat he did in fact sell 15 acres of "educational" land to the department last October/November, and was "very happy" with the deal. But it remains a mystery why, nearly six months on from the department's announcement of the acquisition, no sale has been completed, since the rule (in this particular case) is that Durkin may not build a single house until the school site has been transferred. While a portion of Durkin's €27.75 million site has been zoned residential, there is no planning permission as yet, an uncertain scenario for a developer in a county where unfettered building has become a serious bone of contention.
Meanwhile, scepticism reigns. The Minister's statement issued in response to media reports this week, intended to reassure parents, was merely scrutinised for confirmation of suspicions.
While implicitly admitting that the department did not yet own the land, it failed to explain the delay in completing the purchase or why the department had had to change tack so abruptly in relation to the temporary school.
"If they would just be straight with us, if they would just come out and admit there has been a hitch and explain it to us, maybe we would understand," said Sharon Tolan, who has two children in the school. Principal, Maurice Daly, whose gym has been taken over, is now among the many unbelievers: "Nobody was kept informed. Nobody believes anything now. We were led to believe the site was almost there on several occasions. Communication between all the parties has been very, very poor and very unsatisfactory, because it has led to a lot of speculation, gossip, creativity, rumour and counter-rumour. There has been a lot of recrimination and angry words."
For Jimmy and Charlotte Lyons, with two small children in the school (sited a few metres from them), it is proving to be a bruising experience.