Dublin's first inner-city multi-denominational school will open next month on the South Circular Road after a four-year struggle to find permanent accommodation.
The final obstacle to Crumlin Multi-Denominational School opening was cleared last month when An Bord Pleanala turned down an objection by Griffith College to Dublin Corporation's granting of planning permission to the school to open in Office of Public Works premises beside the college.
It will start with 25 pupils in the old Griffith Barracks guard house and regimental offices. The secretary of its patron body, Ms Deirdre Tobin, said the school hoped to attract the required minimum of 60 pupils by next September to get permanent recognition from the Department of Education.
The school's origins go back to a fire in March 1993 which forced the South City School Project to move from Crumlin to new premises in Nutgrove in the south Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham. A group of parents from Crumlin, Drimnagh and the south inner city felt the new school was too far for their children to travel.
They opened a new multi-denominational school with 10 children in a disused factory in Kilmainham in September 1994, moving 12 months later to a Victorian former health board building in Inchicore.
Last summer they were forced to move again because Zoe Developments, the building's owner, wanted to develop the site earlier than expected. Through the offices of a sympathetic curate in the Liberties, Father Niall Coghlan, they were given two temporary classrooms in St Catherine's National School in School Street behind the Guinness Hop Store.
However, the insecurity caused by the parents' continuous search for accommodation led to pupil numbers falling from 35 to 25.
They had been lobbying the then minister for education, Ms Niamh Bhreathnach, for some time to find permanent premises. Last February she offered them the site owned by the Office of Public Works. In the summer, Dublin Corporation granted planning permission against objections from Griffith College, which then appealed it to An Bord Pleanala.
Like all multi-denominational schools with temporary recognition, Crumlin gets its teachers' salaries paid and a per-pupil capitation payment by the Department of Education, but nothing for building or renovation. Ms Tobin estimated the cost of renovating the guard house and regimental offices as school premises at £25,000.
The parents, most of them working-class, have raised £4,000 so far. Ms Tobin said they included carpenters, electricians and workers in the building trade, who can do some of the renovation work themselves.
The chairman of the board of management, Mr Alan Walker, thanked the Department of Education, the OPW, the INTO, local politicians and community groups, and particularly staff and parents, "who have worked together in extremely difficult circumstances", for supporting the school for the past four years.