Kids go cold for €300

Billy Bunting

Is it just me who can't believe that a professional heating Engineer would price a job at €300 for the Dept of Education and walk away and leave kids in their coats for 5 weeks.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cash-strapped-school-tells-children-to-keep-their-coats-on-in-class-575867.html

Del2005

Billy Bunting wrote: »

Is it just me who can't believe that a professional heating Engineer would price a job at €300 for the Dept of Education and walk away and leave kids in their coats for 5 weeks.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cash-strapped-school-tells-children-to-keep-their-coats-on-in-class-575867.html

If the school can't pay for the work who will? The teachers, caretaker or anyone else won't work for free, why should the engineer?

Don't know if it's because I'm on a phone but link didn't work.

kippy

Billy Bunting wrote: »

Is it just me who can't believe that a professional heating Engineer would price a job at €300 for the Dept of Education and walk away and leave kids in their coats for 5 weeks.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cash-strapped-school-tells-children-to-keep-their-coats-on-in-class-575867.html

In fairness if he operated on that basis his own kids wouldn't be fed or heated for long.......

The issue is not with the professional who priced the job......

Todd Gack

Billy Bunting wrote: »

Is it just me who can't believe that a professional heating Engineer would price a job at €300 for the Dept of Education and walk away and leave kids in their coats for 5 weeks

Why would he/she work for free?, surely the parents could throw a tenner each in if the cold is that bad, it's ridiculous to think it's the engineer's responsibility to do jobs for free when a government department run school claims not to be able to afford them.

DoneDL

There is a reasonable chance that one of the parents or a family member of a parent is in the trade, why not ask them.

Billy Bunting

Todd Gack wrote: »

Why would he/she work for free?, .

Who said anything about working for free ? This is the Dept of Education, anyone who has done work for any Gov Dept would know that payment doesnt come quickly, but it does eventually come.

Dardania

The DoES have an emergency works scheme, the principal should avail of that... Otherwise, apply for a summer works scheme, like all other schools each year, to deal with these problems in advance. I've put in 3 or 4 of those applications in the last few years, never once been given any less than the full budget cost from the DoES

The principals are quite empowered to run their own schools as they please, as they receive an annual budget...poor financial management perhaps? I've been in other schools in similar situations, and money for a quick fix was always forthcoming without great difficulty

jimf

Billy Bunting wrote: »

Is it just me who can't believe that a professional heating Engineer would price a job at €300 for the Dept of Education and walk away and leave kids in their coats for 5 weeks.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cash-strapped-school-tells-children-to-keep-their-coats-on-in-class-575867.html

fair point billy but if this has dragged on for 5 weeks now without the finances put in place to pay how long would they be waiting for their money maybe past experience has taught him a lesson we dont know the full story

Todd Gack

Billy Bunting wrote: »

Who said anything about working for free ? This is the Dept of Education, anyone who has done work for any Gov Dept would know that payment doesnt come quickly, but it does eventually come.

Your link, the school "does not have the €300 needed to fix it", if it does not have the money then the work can't be paid for, why would someone waste time and money to wait around in the hope they'll eventually get paid.

Onikage

Billy Bunting wrote: »

Is it just me who can't believe that a professional heating Engineer would price a job at €300 for the Dept of Education and walk away and leave kids in their coats for 5 weeks.

Professionals get paid for their work.

Our Lady of the Wayside National School in Bluebell has had a broken boiler for around five weeks, but it does not have the €300 needed to fix it.

Ah I see the problem.

JohnnieK

Fixed and serviced the local schools boiler and serviced the other two and was paid a month and a half later, that's just the way it is, they have a monthly budget and this happened between budgets so I was paid on the next budget.

TPM

This is a real sign of the times.

Its a disgrace that situations like this arise.
Its not fair to blame the heating engineer when we dont know the whole story, maybe he is already owed alot of money by the school
maybe the €300 is for parts and he is giving his time to help the kids
maybe it is only a photocell and he is taking the pi~~,
we just dont know.

Sometimes people are in a position to help out sometimes they are not.

It is the kids that are paying for it which isnt fair

byhookorbycrook

Dardania wrote: »

The DoES have an emergency works scheme, the principal should avail of that... Otherwise, apply for a summer works scheme, like all other schools each year, to deal with these problems in advance. I've put in 3 or 4 of those applications in the last few years, never once been given any less than the full budget cost from the DoES

The principals are quite empowered to run their own schools as they please, as they receive an annual budget...poor financial management perhaps? I've been in other schools in similar situations, and money for a quick fix was always forthcoming without great difficulty

The "summer works" grant was not issued this year, hence this issue.
Subcontractors went to remove doors from a primary school in Limerick last week, hard to blame them.


"Summer Works Scheme

The Department of Education and Skills has announced that the Summer Works Scheme will not be available in 2012. The INTO has stressed that the scheme has been very successful over the years with regard to the maintenance and modernisation of school buildings. The scheme will be reviewed again for 2013.
History of the Scheme
On 10 December 2003, DES introduced a new initiative known as the Summer Works Scheme (SWS) designed to fund small-scale works to those schools most in need of resources. The scheme replaced all existing small scale building project schemes with the exception of the devolved Grant Scheme for Minor Works." From the INTO site


School budgets have been slashed, even the bould Eddie Hobbs admitted he could make ends meet in a school about 3 years ago and that was before the last round of cuts.

Billy Bunting

Well i can see the split here between Rural living and City folk, i'm a Rural chap myself and the local schools around me are part of our community, that could be my kids sat in the cold, maybe thats one of the big problems, there is little sense of community in Dublin anymore, i personally would take a look and i suspect i would see a fix for far less than €300.

I don't charge the school, church or the GAA, they work to hard at fund raising for me to be dipping in to it.

jimf

JohnnieK wrote: »

Fixed and serviced the local schools boiler and serviced the other two and was paid a month and a half later, that's just the way it is, they have a monthly budget and this happened between budgets so I was paid on the next budget.

well if this is how it works johnnie then yes it is bad form to leave kids sitting in cold class rooms for the sake of £300

and billy does have a very valid point indeed

paddy147

Id drag in the local goverment TD for that area/school and make him or her squirm under pressure,in view of kids being left for 5 weeks with no heating.


Im sure that they could easily afford a few hundread euro out of their massive salary and allowences package.

JohnnieK

jimf wrote: »

well if this is how it works johnnie then yes it is bad form to leave kids sitting in cold class rooms for the sake of £300

and billy does have a very valid point indeed

But as someone said maybe they are owed a lot of money and won't come in until a percentage is paid, we just don't have the full story.

sparksfly

After 4 years of austerity-

We can afford to pay failed bankers 500,000 euro per annum.
We can pay Brian Cowen 3000 euro per week.

We cant afford keep schoolkids warm for a once-off 300 euro.

shane0007

JohnnieK wrote: »

But as someone said maybe they are owed a lot of money and won't come in until a percentage is paid, we just don't have the full story.

I look after a lot of the schools and churches heating systems in my area and I know if they could not afford to fix their boiler, I would do it for free.
What I do not understand is if they are down to their less than €300, how will they pay their ESB bill, oil bill and others at the end of the month?

drunkmonkey

The Principal should be sacked. If the Teachers and Management couldn't get €300 together to fix the heating while waiting for the funds it's all a matter. If my kids were there i'd be pulling them out straight away as not to let the management and teachers can't do attitude rub off on them.
There's no excuse for letting kids freeze for 5 weeks. I'm sure the staff canteen had some heathers going and a hot kettle absolute disgraceful conduct by staff and management.

paddy147

drunkmonkey wrote: »

The Principal should be sacked. If the Teachers and Management couldn't get €300 together to fix the heating while waiting for the funds it's all a matter. If my kids were there i'd be pulling them out straight away as not to let the management and teachers can't do attitude rub off on them.
There's no excuse for letting kids freeze for 5 weeks. I'm sure the staff canteen had some heathers going and a hot kettle absolute disgraceful conduct by staff and management.

Is it right to say the principal should be sacked??

Is it right to blame the teachers??

Do you yourself actually know the specifics and entire story,behind the scenes???

TPM

my biggest problem with this story is that it was in the news, And I tend not to believe most of what we hear in the news because a lot of it is blown up for news sake.

Its not fair to blame people when we dont know all the details.

The heating could well be fixed by now,
The five weeks there has been no heating could actually be that it was working and breaking down again.
I just dont put too much into "news stories" as alot of them dont resemble the actual story.

The one thing we do know for sure is that the government are making a complete mess of things and this time it seems to be the kids suffering.


Alot of the lads on here do work for their community,(school, local center, church ect.) and most have preferential rates for them I would think. and very few of them would see kids sitting in the cold.

Gurgle

Stupid rabble rousing non story.

€300, how does that compare to the amount of oil they would have burned in the same 5 weeks?
That saving alone would cover fixing the thing.

Its a catholic school. I'm guessing the parish priest could produce €300 without missing it.

There's 17 staff and presumably at least the same number of students (:rolleyes:), let them throw in €10 each if they're that cold and the church won't put hands into pockets.

I bet they've got electronic whiteboards and iPads all over the shop...

slavetothegrind

definitely not the full story, i'd bet anything there is at least one plumber parent in that school, or a close associate of someone.

i find it hard to believe they could not convince someone to sort the heating in 5 weeks of trying

If i got the phone book out for my area and started at the first plumber and worked down i seriously doubt i would have a negative response the whole way through the list

something not quite right here.....

Feck's sake if they had posted on here it would have been sorted!!!!

paddy147

Yet people who are in serious financial strife (due to loss of job) with Bord Gais get cut off by them,as Bord Gais refuse to accept any payment plan from the customers.


None of those storys make the news.

Gurgle

paddy147 wrote: »

Yet people who are in serious financial strife (due to loss of job) with Bord Gais get cut off by them,as Bord Gais refuse to accept any payment plan from the customers.

None of those storys make the news.

Shocking, people who don't pay the bill for a service stop receiving the service.
What is the world coming to?

deandean

Either there's some bad management going on in that school.

Or, the kids are being used as pawns.

Or, the article has been spiced up by the journalist.

In my kids school, if we needed money urgently, I would organise a pub quiz at short notice, raise 500 or 1000, job done. And it wouldn't appear in the paper.

Unfortunately school principals now have to get three quotes for even small jobs and go through a procurement process.

Remember the old saying, if you work for free you'll always be busy.

paddy147

Gurgle wrote: »

Shocking, people who don't pay the bill for a service stop receiving the service.
What is the world coming to?

Nope..its people who cant afford to pay the bill in full,who unfortunately get in to arrears.These people still try to pay X-Amount (that they can afford) off the bill each week to the arrears department of Bord Gais,but its refused.

Bord Gais demand the money and even when the CER (Central Energy Regulator) tells people to enter into a payment plan with Bord Gais,Bord Gais flatly refuses the payment plan and amount from the customer,even when proof of income is given and it shows that a person cannot afford to pay back what Bord Gais demands.

paddy147

Im amazed that no one had posted this yet..........

DGOBS

I also agree with Billy here, I too (in a small village) service the schools boilers free of charge, also got sent a cheque for some works done in a local house from the SVP and sent it back. It is both good will and good business to do some works for your community.

Gary, think I would possibly charge the GAA though!

Dardania

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

The "summer works" grant was not issued this year, hence this issue.
Subcontractors went to remove doors from a primary school in Limerick last week, hard to blame them.


"Summer Works Scheme

The Department of Education and Skills has announced that the Summer Works Scheme will not be available in 2012. The INTO has stressed that the scheme has been very successful over the years with regard to the maintenance and modernisation of school buildings. The scheme will be reviewed again for 2013.
History of the Scheme
On 10 December 2003, DES introduced a new initiative known as the Summer Works Scheme (SWS) designed to fund small-scale works to those schools most in need of resources. The scheme replaced all existing small scale building project schemes with the exception of the devolved Grant Scheme for Minor Works." From the INTO site


School budgets have been slashed, even the bould Eddie Hobbs admitted he could make ends meet in a school about 3 years ago and that was before the last round of cuts.

Didn't know they ended the summer works scheme (left consultancy work in March...)- quite the bummer so... They should still have the emergency works scheme though?

That issue in Limerick, if it's this one: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1123/1224327011107.html has nothing to do with lack of funds from the DoES - it's a product of the GCCC contract, and builders not paying their subbies...

DGOBS

DGOBS wrote: »

Gary, think I would possibly charge the GAA though!

my Dad would kill me:eek: