Council Archives

Development

Dev. Outreach Centre for Town Hall

Fri 18 Jun 1999
That’s because any such centre, which will require a dedicated and secure space for a computer laboratory, will initially be located in the room in the Town Hall which houses‚ these other activities, according to Cllr Timmy Conway.

“The UDC has told me they will make that room available if the Outreach Centre gets approval from the Department of Education,” he said recently. “We have to put education facilities first, and I’ve been told the UDC will prioritise the centre facilities before other uses for the Town Hall.”

Cllr Conway has promoted the idea of an Outreach Centre for several months, but, while the board of AIT has looked positively‚ at the idea, there’s no word from the Department of Education, which has put approval for such centres on hold‚ pending a review of the concept. This follows previous establishment of Outreach Centres by Carlow IT which subsequently had to be closed down. But Cllr Conway is confident that he can short-circuit the matter for Naas and have the AIT centre in place by January 2000.

“We just have to get Charlie McCreevy to have it sanctioned for us,” he says. “I haven’t had time to deal with that part of it because of work on the Naas Development Plan and the elections.”

Cllr Conway placed strong emphasis on his expected provision of an Outreach Centre in a controversial document which he circulated to homes in the county town last week on behalf of himself and other supporters of the Naas Development Plan. He has since accepted that there were a number of errors and inaccuracies in the document.