Holy Trinity National School in Westport is just one of the many primary schools across the region that has re-opened to students in a new Covid 19 environment.

The Prinicipal , staff,  and Board of Management of the 60 plus student school, have been working hard in the run-up to reopening, to make significant adaptations to classrooms, playground, and assembly area to accommodate the new Covid regulations.

Holy Trinity NS has been promised a brand new school by the Dept of Education for more than a decade now, as the present school building, almost 200 years old, is no longer fit for purpose.

But so far, despite having acquired a site for the new school, the dept has not released the funding required to build the new school.

Midwest News visited the school today.

A busy, happy, learning environment greets you on entry to Holy Trinity NS in Westport.

Junior and Senior Infants were playing in their own marked out areas of the school yard and on the other side of the yard, the first class pupils were at play.

It’s a small area in its entirety – dividing it up into distinct areas makes the space quite confined.

Principlal Orla Brickenden outlined the changes to the school’s system to try to accommodate covid regulations in an already overcrowded space.

The school assembly area – no longer in use for assemblies and dance and music classes – is now storing furniture taken out of classrooms and also has an isolation space incorporated into it.

Holy Trinity NS has an online petition underway  - appealing to the Dept of Education to deliver on its promise to build a new school for Holy Trinity and not to impose a second school building – one for Education Together on the same site.

The site, they claim, is only large enough for one school and could only accommodate a second school on the playground of the first one.

Eoin Holmes is a member of Holy Trinity’s Board of Management and he explained the ongoing campaign to secure what’s been promised for a decade now to the school.