Updated 19:25

Transition Year students at a Dublin school have been asked to stay at home this week due to safety fears.

One of the buildings at Ardgillan Community College in Dublin was closed with immediate effect over the weekend.

The Department of Education and school management took the decision after a fire safety assessment found 'significant structural issues.'

Up to 200 students will be taking classes elsewhere in the interests of the health and safety of the students.

Ardgillan Community College in Dublin

The school may now be forced to bring in prefabs to temporarily replace the 18 room facility.

Paddy Lavelle, Chief Executive Officer in the Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board said the issues were uncovered during a routine fire safety assessment.

“We discovered that some of the ties that are linking the front side of the front panel of the building to the [...] inner part were not fixed appropriately.

“It means that basically the outside of the building and the inside of the building are not tied together.

“It is a structural issue with the building.”

Fire safety audits

Ardgillan is one of 31 schools carrying out fire safety audits after fire safety breaches were uncovered in the construction of six schools.

The Department of Education hired construction company Western Building Systems to build phase one of the school in 2009.

Mr Lavelle said that, at the moment, there is no cause for concern regarding other schools built by the company. 

“I don’t know to what extent other schools may have been effected but each building is unique; I don’t expect that it is the same type of issue everywhere,” he said.

“But certainly in our case, it is something that is significant and has to be addressed over the near time.

“There schools that we have had that were dealt with by Western but none of them have identified this type of issue.” 

He said there are 910 students enrolled in the school and around 90 transition year's have been asked to stay home.

“That will allow us to manage the rest of the students within the school building – the new school building, which is a phase two building," he said.

“We hope that after the mid-term break there will be other arrangements to ensure that every student gets education from then on.”

'Urgent assessments' 

In a statement this evening, the Department of Education confirmed it is commissioning "additional urgent structural assessments" in all of the schools where building projects were completed by Western Building Systems.

The statement notes: "The Department is working closely with the [Education & Training Board] in dealing with the issues identified at Ardgillan Community College on Friday. As soon as advice was received from a consultant structural engineer and in consultation with the ETB a decision was taken to close the section of the school with immediate effect.

It adds: "In September 2018, the [Chief State Solicitor's Office], on behalf of the Department, issued plenary summons on Western Building Systems in respect of four school where works have been or are currently being carried out by the Department to remediate issues identified in fire risk assessment reports.

"The Department remains in ongoing consultation with CSSO in respect of these cases."

Reporting from Kacey O'Riordan