The largest boys school in Galway city has been forced to reject 250 applicants for its autumn 2026 term as it has ran out of space.
Management of St Joseph’s Patrician College 'The Bish' has expressed exasperation after being forced to refuse around 60 per cent of the families who applied for their sons to attend the ageing Nuns Island school this year.
Earlier this month its Board of Management, and principal, Sarah Gleeson, were “devastated” to learn that the 164-year-old, all-boys college would not be included in a long-anticipated, €3.2 billion school building and refurbishment programme, despite waiting more than 20 years on a government list, and having a greenfield site secured for a brand new facility in Dangan.
This week, the Bish's Parents Council issued a strongly worded statement, condemning a two-decade delay in relocating the school.
“Our children are being asked to learn in facilities that were never designed for a school of this size, or for the demands of today’s education system,” said Ms Stephanie Rea, on behalf of parents. “Teachers are doing their very best, but they are working in deeply constrained conditions. It is not fair on staff, and it is not fair on students, who deserve a safe, modern and supportive learning environment."
The University of Galway has agreed a 6.5 acre land swap with the Bish, and last summer the Patrician Brothers secured planning permission for a 11,134 sqm school for 1,000 students to be built next to the university’s playing fields along the N59 Clifden Road near Circular Road. Based on 2021 educational construction prices, adjusted for inflation, the project will cost at least €19 million.
It is understood more than 70 per cent of this year’s applications came from west of the Corrib, including from Spiddal, Moycullen and Barna. Despite rapidly rising population across Galway’s western suburbs, no new secondary school has been built there since Colaiste na Coiribe relocated from the Tuam Road in 2015, to purpose-built buildings in Ballyburke, Knocknacarra.
The Bish’s main facility, built in the 1960s, was designed for 450 students, but the roll is currently above 750. It has no sports facilities on Nuns Island. A number of Special Education Needs units are situated in the school’s yard, meaning little space for play, and its pupils are forced to forage in the city centre for lunch.
In January 2025, Storm Éowyn ripped the roof off the Bish’s Victorian monastery building, forcing teachers to send classes to an An Tobar Nua café, the Education Centre and Aras na nGael for several weeks.
Last month, Minister for Education, Oranmore TD Hildegarde Naughton, announced funding for 105 school building projects, including five across County Galway.
Criteria
A spokesman for the Department of Education told the Advertiser there is recognition that schools with important building projects were not included in the first tranche of prioritised projects.
He said: “Accommodation needs at St Joseph’s Patrician College will be considered as part of the ongoing, overall department-led prioritisation process” and that a new ‘Energy and Condition Survey’ of the country’s schools, to be finalised later in 2026, “will provide an additional evidence base for assessing priorities”.
Projects were chosen because they were at “stage 3” meaning they would progress to the “construction stage as smoothly as possible over the course of 2026 and 2027,” the spokesman said.
In response, Kieran Kavanagh, Chairperson of the Bish’s Board of Management, said he can remember no visit ever from a Department of Education surveyor to assess the school’s cramped and crumbling buildings. He said that the Bish’s plans – currently at “stage 2b” – would be at the Department’s ready-to-tender, Stage 3 level, in April, as all design work is complete.
“We have no reason to believe we will have funding status changed in the near future, or information on what metrics that will be [decided] on. We are beyond disappointed," he said. "We should have been on that list.”
The Department of Education said schools at Stage 2b were prioritised if they had planning permission, with special schools given preference.
“For other schools, a multi-faceted qualitative assessment of relative priority took account of?schools that did not have permanent accommodation and had ongoing demographic pressures, ?special education capacity being provided, demographic pressures relative to capacity at that school and across the area, the extent to which schools are prioritising local school-place needs, any?significant?condition issues at the school, any interim accommodation constraints, and the duration of the project to date,” an official added.
In 2022, former Galway West TD, Catherine Connolly, suggested the vacant Our Lady’s College on Presentation Road - separated from Nuns Island by the narrow St Clare River which flows beneath the Bish - might be an appropriate property to extend St Joseph's into.
During her successful campaign for the presidency last autumn, Connolly came under fire for using her casting vote as Mayor of a hung Galway City Council, in 2005, to oppose rezoning university land in Dangan for the Bish, thereby delaying the school's redevelopment and relocation.
The school's Parents Council say the Dangan relocation was undertaken at the "express request" of the Department of Education, and that the university land swap means no site acquisition costs for taxpayers.
