WHEN Nollaig Osborne arrives at the national school in Collinamuck Co Galway, the first thing she does is turn a switch on an antiquated oil stove in her classroom.
The teacher waits for the oil to run into the bottom of the stove, then drops in a lighted firelighter.
If she's lucky and the day is calm the classroom is warm by about 11 a.m. But if there is a wind it rushes through vents in the gable ends of the school and underneath the wooden floor, drawing away what little heat has been generated.
"On a windy day you can see the floor covering actually billowing up," she says. "I spend a lot of my time bringing the little ones up to the stove, heating their hands because they cannot hold pencils or crayons.
Little has happened to the two teacher school since it was built in 1942. It is now in urgent need of repair.
Some of the windows are rotting, and the roof leaks. The teachers cloakroom is literally a toilet with a phone. In winter the corridor can become a cold and dangerous skating rink.
"There are ceramic tiles on the floor and of course there is no insulation underneath, so you have condensation on the floor and on the walls. The corridor is like a freezer," she says.
The school was on the Department of Education's priority building list in 1995. But somehow it did not appear on this year's list, even though plans were drawn up and approved and the Department publicly invited tenders for the work in an advertisement published last July.
"We assumed we would be on the January list but other schools appeared on it that hadn't been there before. They were in north Kerry and in Meath. Maybe the politicians there were working very hard, maybe ours let us down, but definitely it's very suspect," says Ms Osborne.
A spokesman for the Department said the Minister, Ms Breathnach, decided the list each year, based on information available to her at the time. The Minister would later review the list and see what additional funding was available for more projects.
Referring to the national school in Collinamuck, he explained that an asterisk beside it on the 1995 list meant it was one of several schools facing possible delays. "One cannot explain why it is not on this year's list, other than that the Minister decides from time to time what the priorities are," he said.
The Collinamuck case is not isolated, according to Mr Micheal O Riabhaigh, chairman of Gaelscoil Mhich Chiosog in Ennis, Co Clare. Like Collinamuck, the school featured on the 1995 list but the Department has yet to sanction building work and it is not on the current list.
The school is housed in a collection of seven prefabs most of which are more than 25 years old.
He tells a familiar tale of small rooms, inadequate heating and ventilation, and few, if any, facilities. Only huge voluntary commitment from parents and teachers has maintained the school for the past 15 years. They have raised more than £12,000 for essential work on it during this time.
A site for a proper school building has been bought, planning permission secured and a campaign for the necessary Departmental approval has continued since 1989.
Mr O Riabhaigh is angry that schools like his, which went by the book and did not seek to create a fuss in the media, have been "rewarded" by being bypassed for more vocal protesters.
He says building work is being sanctioned in schools such as Kilglass in east Galway and Urbleshanny in Co Monaghan simply because parents and teachers there succeeded in highlighting the plight of their schools on television.
In an election year, the last thing the Minister wants is parents protesting about inadequate facilities.
The immediate move to appease them has reinforced suspicions that the priority lists are based on criteria other than to service the most deserving schools, he said.
"It's not a priority list the Department has, it's a political list," he says in Irish. "That's the message we're getting back from the politicians."
A computer manager in a Shannon company, Mr O Riabhaigh is loath to take to the streets to claim what he feels is a basic right: the right to an education under the same conditions as everyone else. But he sees little option if he wants to get results. "It's terrible, but that is what they are saying to us we have to do.
Meanwhile, an examination of the Department's lists in recent years shows no apparent pattern in the way schools are ranked.
The lack of a clear explanation of the procedures used will lend weight to claims that such decisions are politically motivated.
In Kerry, for example, three schools appeared on the 1996 list but three different schools in the county appear on the current one. It could be inferred that someone down there is working very hard on their behalf.