Council refuses plea for school warden, saying they aren’t allowed to stand on private footpath

On a Thursday afternoon at 2pm, kids streamed out of Stapolin Educate Together National School. 

At the entrance, some grabbed the hands of waiting parents and followed them to cars. 

Others grabbed their scooters and bicycles out of a long line of miniature vehicles parked under an awning, and followed their parents out the black gates.

Special needs assistant Samantha O’Flanagan managed some kids crossing Myrtle Road. She and other school staff members often do that, she said.

“We shouldn't be out there managing traffic at all,” O’Flanagan says. But they’re worried about the safety of the children among all the cars. “It's really dangerous.”

There’s no official signalised or zebra crossing. And despite yellow zigzag lines along the street in front of the school, cars regularly illegally park there – the general public and parents alike, O’Flanagan says. 

Pulling in and out they could hit a kid, she says. Even parked, the cars hide children who might be crossing, so oncoming drivers might not be able to see them before they step out and it’s too late. 

O’Flanagan is far from the only one concerned. “Essentially, like, that road isn't fit for purpose, for an approach to a school,” said Áine O’Sullivan, a parent of a child at the school. “It's extremely unsafe.”

Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins has brought two motions in recent months to Fingal County Council, asking for improvements to make the front of the school safer for children. Both asked for a school warden to help them cross safely. 

No can do, council staff have said: the council doesn’t own the bit of footpath where the warden would need to stand. 

But local councillors, and a TD, say this should not be an obstacle – and it hasn’t been elsewhere. 

Calls for change

Hopkins, the councillor, said it was about nine months before the school opened in September 2023 when she realised how unsafe the design was for walkers and cyclists, and started pushing for improvements. 

Council staff visited the school entrance and had a look, and discussed the issue, and since then they’ve installed additional road markings – like the zigzag lines – and signs, according to a council report. But parents and teachers still think it’s too dangerous. 

On 2 April of this year, Hopkins brought a motion to the council’s Howth/Malahide Area Committee asking “that the Chief Executive re-engage with the school board around the safety issues outside Stapolin Educate Together”.

Yes, the council had made an effort to improve the safety at the school gate. But she’d been at the school, filming the situation at the entrance the morning of the meeting,  and “a child nearly got run over by somebody doing a three point turn to go the wrong way down the voluntary one way street”, she said. “So it’s not working.”

At the meeting, she referred to the TV show Parks and Recreation. “There's a scene in it one time where the lads invite somebody over from a council in a different country, and they introduce the planner, and your man says to the other guy, ‘Um, was this town planned?’ Hopkins said. “And sometimes I feel like I'm in that show.”

Her motion asked council staff to “re-engage with the school board around the safety issues”, asking, among other things, for school wardens. In response, James Culhane, a senior executive engineer in the council’s Operations Department, said Fingal can’t put a school warden there. 

“Upon investigation it was determined that sections of the footpath and parking spaces along Myrtle Road are not taken in charge by Fingal County Council,” Culhane’s report said. “It is only possible to install school traffic wardens on public roads as outlined in the Roads Act (1961).”

Hopkins tried again a month later. At an area committee meeting on 7 May, she brought an emergency motion, asking the council to put a school warden in front of Stapolin Educate Together, to keep children safe as they leave. Same answer: can’t be done.

But other councillors and a local TD aren’t buying this at all. 

Can be done?

Green Party Councillor David Healy says that while the footpaths are not owned by the council at the moment, the road itself is a public road. So that should satisfy the requirement of the Roads Act, he said. 

If it’s not the Roads Act, but insurance worries that are keeping the council from assigning school wardens to the school, that shouldn’t be a barrier either, councillors say.

At the 7 May area committee meeting, independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin said council staff often work in private spaces. 

“It's not unusual for staff to be going out and to be insured on property that is not in the ownership of the policy holder,” Guerin said. “It's only a matter of amending the insurance.” 

By phone later, Labour Councillor James Humphreys said the council should just be able to ask for permission from the landowner, and after that their insurance should still be valid.

Healy, the Green Party councillor, said this makes sense to him. But, he reiterated, “Where the carriageway is in charge l don’t even think the permission of the land owner would be an issue as anyone can use the footpath.”

Or, barring that, since the council owns the roadway, it could build a bit of new, council-owned footpath on the edge of it, where the traffic wardens could stand, Healy said.

Another option proposed is that the footpath can be handed over to the council. At the moment, the footpath close to the school is owned by the Department of Education. 

“The school have started the procedure to have the footpath taken over, but they hadn't been made aware that it was something they should have done or a possibility until a couple of weeks ago,” said O’Flanagan, the SNA at the school. 

Just do it

But none of that should be necessary, some local representatives say. 

“We seem to be coming at this is, why can't we, as opposed to, how can we?” Councillor  Guerin said. “We're talking about, you know, a school warden. I can't see anybody ringing up and complaining that he's on private property.”

Hopkins, Healy and Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan all also said that a similar situation had arisen in the Dublin City Council area, and that council had decided to assign traffic wardens anyway. 

O’Callaghan pointed, as an example, to a school in Belmayne, where the road was private. But Dublin City Council “recognised the over-riding safety need” for traffic wardens. 

“It would be great if Fingal would also adopt a similar approach,” he said.

Paddy Monahan, a Social Democrats councillor on Dublin City Council, said similar. “They're clearly not bound by the legislation, because it's already been done elsewhere.” 

"No one’s going to object. Nobody's going to say this is a bad use of time or money," Monahan said. “I don't think anyone's going to go to prison for putting a traffic warden there.”

But at the 7 May meeting, senior executive engineer Andrew Nolan said that “The fact that DCC are doing something is DCC.”

“That's up to DCC. It's not up to us. We are working within the legislation that's available to us, and that's all I can say on that matter,” he said.

Making do

Outside the school gates on Thursday afternoon, O’Flanagan, the SNA, pointed to a small park, a stretch of grass with football goals, across from the school. 

Once, school staff had put up a traffic warden scarecrow there, she said. 

“From a distance with the high-vis clothes and large stop sign, it did look like someone was standing there,” she said.

“And you could see a reduction in speed, cars being more sensible and cautious,” she said. Until they realised it was a scarecrow.

A real traffic warden would be far better, of course, she says. 

Paul Winter, who’s been a relief school warden for the last three years, says it shouldn’t be hard to hire one. 

“The job school warden is very sought after,” he said. It's good pay, limited hours, responsibility, and he likes it a lot, he says. 

He said to qualify, there were a lot of steps. He was interviewed by a three-panel team, there’s training, and more training each year. Plus, he wears a neon uniform, steel-toed boots, has road signs, and wardens have extra law enforcement powers.

In the meantime, O’Flanagan says that even though it's not their job, she and other staff at the school will step in to help the kids from their school cross safely.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.