SOME 125 pupils were withdrawn from a Co Limerick school yesterday in protest over the Government's failure to provide a new building.
The school has no indoor toilets and has not been refurbished since 1909.
Parents of children attending Kilfinane National School in Co Limerick withdrew their children after Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe said the project would not be funded this year due to departmental overspending.
The building is over 100 years old, has only outside toilet facilities and was forced to close three years ago due to a rat infestation.
Hopes were high that work on a new building, for which tenders have already been received, would begin over the summer. Following a recent visit to the school Mr O'Keeffe told parents that funding would not be available this year.
The Minister criticised the strike action being taken by parents and asked that they have "patience and restraint".
"All I'm asking for is a small bit of patience to see exactly what funding is there, to see how we can move the building programme forward," he said. "I'm not going to make ad-hoc decisions without knowing exactly where I am in relation to the actual funds that are available to me," he added.
Mr O'Keeffe said Kilfinane is a "priority project" and his department would move as soon as he was certain funds were available.
Following Mr O'Keeffe's visit, the school's parents' council unanimously agreed to take their children home from school at 10.45am yesterday morning for a "toilet-break" and kept them from school for the rest of the day.
"We are no longer happy with the lip service the Government has been paying to us for the past decade," said Sonia Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the parents' council. "We have done everything by the book so far. We have written the letters, filled out the applications, made the phone calls, but enough is enough and it's about time the Minister and his Government was shamed into providing indoor toilet facilities for our children and proper educational facilities," she added.
In a statement yesterday, the INTO president Declan Kelleher said he fully supported the protest.
"Even though there is a downturn in the economy it is disgraceful that the children of Kilfinane National School have to suffer these draconian conditions.
"Substandard school buildings are not inevitable. Overcrowded, run down dilapidated schools are the result of choices, not fate. It doesn't have to be like this."