The Laois Offally Educate Together Board (LOETB) have submitted a planning application with Laois County Council to build a new 1,000-pupil school in Portlaoise.
The application comes eight years after the LOETB, as patrons, opened Dunamase College / Coláiste Dhún Másc in the centre of Portlaoise as a temporary stop-gap while waiting on progress to be made at the site in The Downes.
Dunamase College is an Irish/English language, co-educational, multi-belief school with “a strong emphasis on innovation and technology in education and offers a wide range of subjects”.
This latest application seeks to construct a part two storey and part three storey school with provisions for 1,000 secondary school students.
The proposed school is to include general classrooms, specialist classrooms, a general-purpose hall, a PE hall, offices, a staff room, a library, sanitary facilities and ancillary spaces.
The development also includes the provision of two new site entrances, one from the O’Dowling Roundabout on the Portlaoise South Orbital Route on the R94.
The entrance will lead to a car and bus set-down/drop-off area with 49 carparking spaces and a pedestrian and cycle route to the school.
There other entrance is to be at the adjoining Timahoe/Well Road on the R426 with access to footpaths, cycle routes, bicycle spaces and another 92 car parking spaces.
The application includes a proposed hockey pitch with associated fencing, dugouts and floodlighting, as well as a further six ball courts, landscaped gardens and external social space.
Further elements include a heat pump and gas storage areas, external stores, a bin storage area, landscaping, boundary treatments and drainage.
