There has been a huge outcry from the parents at Our Lady’s Grove school and from the local Goatstown community, in relation to the sale of the land surrounding our schools.
National and local newspapers and the RTE have been reporting. Respected journalists, broadcasters, university lecturers and Irish historians have been vocal about protecting school lands from being sold by religious orders.
This is a round up of news on the campaign by Concerned Parents and Residents against the sale of remaining land around Our Lady’s Grove Schools.
29th MayOLG in The Irish Times
Kitty Holland: Parents at south Dublin school appeal to religious founders not to sell land
‘There are so many young families moving into the area. If a developer is going to build houses on this site, where are all those children going to go to school? These fields should be part of an educational campus, to be used for field games and future expansion when needed.’
29th May
OLG in RTE News:
Nuns defend decision to sell land attached to schools
‘A congregation of nuns in Dublin has defended its decision to sell land attached to two schools in south Dublin.
The Sisters of Jesus and Mary says it is selling the five-acre site adjacent to the Goatstown Road because it is surplus to their requirements.
The nuns say the sale of the land is close to completion. In a letter to parents, the Board of Management of Our Lady's Grove primary school says the religious order sought unconditional support from the board for a planning application related to the sale. The letter says that the board "could not offer" this. It says the Sisters and their representatives "have not been open and transparent" with the board, and has accused the order of "unexpected and unilateral" changes during negotiations aimed at ensuring that a non commercial childcare facility would remain on the site.'
31st May
OLG in The Irish Times
Ronan McGreevy: Religious order sells Dublin lands for €13m despite objections
‘A religious order has sold a plot of land for an estimated €13 million despite objections from parents at the adjoining primary school. Green Party TD Catherine Martin suggested parents would be “desperately disappointed” by the decision and she criticised the Department of Education for not stepping in to ensure the land remained available to the school.
She said the sale was a “stark indication of a lack of future planning and joined-up thinking” on the part of the department. “The community and their future needs are not being put first.”
She warned that other primary schools in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council area could go the same way as the lands attached to 25 of them are zoned as residential.'
1st June
OLG in the Independent
Ronald Quinlan: Nuns get €13m after ignoring parents and selling school land for housing
'An order of nuns has sold school lands for €3m more than the €10m guide price in the face of parents' objections.
The Religious Sisters of Jesus and Mary is understood to have secured in the region of €13m from the sale of a 5.4-acre site beside Our Lady's Grove Primary School at Goatstown Road, south Dublin.'
1st June
OLG in the Independent Business
Ronald Quinlan: Nuns secure €13m in sale of Goatstown school lands
'While parents of children attending Our Lady's Grove primary school and Jesus and Mary College had voiced their objections to the sale, arguing that the schools would be left with no green space and no room to expand in the future, the nuns have defended their decision to sell, saying the income it delivers will be used to support the congregation's other ministries, including overseas missions and the ongoing care of sisters, a number of whom would have taught in the two schools.'
1st June
OLG in RTE News:
Land at two south Dublin schools sold for reported €13m
‘Parents at two schools in south Dublin have said they are extremely disappointed that a congregation of nuns has sold land attached to the schools to a developer for a reported €13 million.
The land - 5.4 acres - was previously used by students attending Our Lady's Grove Primary School and Jesus and Mary Secondary School in Goatstown.
The sale comes just two weeks after the Christian Brothers sold playing fields attached to another south Dublin school, Clonkeen College, for a sum of €10m.
Both sites are zoned for housing.The Goatstown site is suitable for up to 80 houses and apartments.
RTÉ News has established that the land in question, called Roebuck Grove, was sold to the congregation in 1963 by the State's Land Commission. Historians and former Land Commission employees say it would have been unusual for the Commission to have dealt with land so close to Dublin city. Legal documents state that the land was sold for what is referred to as a "consideration". The documents do not mention the actual price paid.’
3rd June
OLG in The Irish Times
Diarmaid Ferriter: How did Irish religious orders get so rich?
‘This “new era” for the aged religious orders also witnesses them as land sellers on a massive scale. In my own area of Goatstown, the Sisters of Jesus and Mary, the founders of Our Lady’s Grove primary and secondary schools, have sold more than five acres of fields formerly used by the schools, for a reported €13 million, with the land zoned for housing. In doing so, they have decimated the capacity for both schools – and the secondary school is the only non-fee-paying secondary school for girls in the area – to expand or provide their students with adequate sports facilities and open space.
The response of the Department of Education is that these transactions are solely “ a matter for the congregation itself”.
That might be the case legally, but it raises this question: how did religious congregations generate such wealth in the first place? From donations, State aid and the fund-raising of many communities.
Almost a century later, the wealth and power of the Catholic Church are still apparent, as is the abject failure of the State to confront the resultant inequality and the irony of the religious orders profiting spectacularly at the expense of community welfare.’
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