Planning permission has been granted for the new Dunamase College secondary school in Portlaoise.
The facility will cater for 1,000 students and be accessed off the Timahoe/Well Road as well as off the Portlaoise South Orbital Road close to the access point for the current Gaelscoil and Portlaoise Educate Together campus.
Dunamase College is Laois’s newest secondary school and first opened for students in September 2017. It is under the auspices of the Laois Offaly Education and Training Board (LOETB).
They are currently based in three buildings in Portlaoise town centre – the old Portlaoise CBS, the old vocational school building and the old Sacred Heart primary school.
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 entrance off the Portlaoise South Orbital Route 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.
The 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.
Welcoming the news, Independent Brian Stanley said: “It is important that this moves ahead now, the cheque needs to be issued.
“The process to build this school needs to be quick as the need for school places in the area is huge.”
While Cllr Caroline Dwane-Stanley said: “As a board member of loetb and Colaiste Dhun Masc / Dunamase College, I want to welcome the announcement of planning permission granted for the new school build that will provide more than 1000 school places.
”I canvassed in 2016, ten years ago, to get a petition signed for the patronage of the school and an Aonad “Irish Stream unit” included and that has been successful.
”LOETB won the patronage 10 years ago, and we have been waiting since then for the new build.
“I have raised this issue every month at our LOETB meetings for an update and kept the new school that’s badly needed on the agenda.
“We badly need the new school along with an ASD unit for students who have Autism.
”We now need to move the process forward to have the new school built as quickly as possible as our existing schools in Portlaoise are over subscribed and we have had to cap school places at present in Dunamase.”
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