Major new Edenderry school gets go ahead

An exciting new era of secondary education beckons for Edenderry with the news that Offaly County Council has granted planning permission for a long-awaited new 1,000-pupil school to replace the existing Oaklands Community College.

The new school building is to be built on a 4.62 hectare brownfield site at Fr. McWey Street, Downshire, to the north of Edenderry town centre and close to the Edenderry Shopping Centre, where Dunnes Stores in the anchor tenant. The site is currently occupied by the partially-constructed Eden Plaza hotel which began development in 2007 but was never completed.

The new school, permission for which was granted to Laois and Offaly Education and Training Board (LOETB) on Wednesday of this week, subject to 14 conditions, will cover an area of 10,989 square metres, and will be one of the largest secondary schools across Laois and Offaly.

It will consist of 37 general purpose classrooms and 24 specialist classrooms and will also have three courtyards, a general purposes room and a PE hall.

The plans also make provision for 122 staff and visitor car parking spaces, seven of which will be accessible; 200 covered bicycle spaces; six fenced ballcourts and a GAA pitch to the north of the site.

Vehicular and pedestrian access to the new school is to be provided from Downshire Ring road, on the western side of the site, will all vehicles and pedestrians exiting the school on the northern side.

The current site for Oaklands Community College, on Saint Senan's Avenue, has long been regarded as being unsuitable for expansion, with an Architect's Report which accompanied the planning application for the new school stating that possible further expansion “of circa 25%” on the existing site was considered as part of the project brief.

The report went on to state that the existing site was found to be “too restricted to make any further provision for future expansion of the school buildings” and that the school building itself and site had “reached full capacity.”

The report, which was prepared by Cork-based architects, Butler Moffat, added that the exiting school, which has in excess of 850 pupils on its roll book, has “no space for further expansion to accommodate the long-term needs of staff and increased projected enrolment.”

Laois and Offaly Education and Training Board had long been seeking a site for a replacement school for Oaklands Community College, and the 4.62 hectare Downshire site was acquired by Offaly County Council in 2015 and subsequently transferred to the Board for use as a suitable site for the new secondary school.

The site was originally acquired by a development company, which began construction of a 90-bed hotel, to be called Eden Plaza, in 2007. However, the project was never completed when the development company experienced financial difficulties, and the partially-constructed hotel has lain idle ever since.

The site has been the subject of a number of incidents of anti-social behaviour in the intervening years , with numerous local elected representatives raising concerns about the need for the site to be developed.

The Principal of Oaklands Community College, Brian Kehoe, was not in a position to make any comment about the new secondary school when contacted by this newspaper yesterday morning (Thursday).