A group of Dublin parents and teachers who caused a security scare when they protested outside the education minister’s Cork home last year have become more creative.

They have turned to YouTube in an attempt to force Batt O’Keeffe to address the “third-world conditions” in their children’s school. Gaelscoil Bharra, in Cabra, Dublin, has posted a video on the popular website that it hopes will embarrass the minister.

The 220-pupil school has no permanent accommodation, is “infested by rodents” and has an “over-ground sewerage system” that “stinks during summer months”.

The 10-minute production, the first in what parents and teachers promise will be a series, is called Fallen Through the Cracks, the phrase used by the Department of Education in internal documents to explain why the school has fallen into such disrepair.

Comprising a collection of eight prefabs beside the grounds of Naomh Fionnbarra GAA club, Gaelscoil Bharra has been campaigning unsuccessfully for 13 years for improvements to be carried out.

The video opens with footage of Sean O Donaile, the principal, banging on the doors of his schools’ prefabs “to chase away any rodents that might be knocking around”.

Some of the walls and floors in the prefabs used by the school have holes in them. The damage has been caused by rats, O Donaile says.

Marianne Devine, the school’s vice-principal, said: “A load of kids came running out of one of the classes one day in a panic and wanted to come into my classroom because there were rats running around.

“The rats have eaten into the walls and burrowed into the floors. They get in around the toilets and the food. We try to keep the place clean as we can because the dirt brings nits in as well,” she said.

The sewerage system behind the school is shared with the GAA club. Maria Temple, a teacher and the school’s treasurer, said: “The stench is terrible during the summer months, as the system is not able to take the level it’s getting.”

The video quotes the Department of Education which, in February 2000, said the accommodation for Gaelscoil Bharra was “highly unsatisfactory by any standards”.

The film tracks the progress of the school, and with the help of documents released under the Freedom of Information act, shows that in May 2005 an internal memo admitted nothing had been done about the school and that it had “fallen through the cracks”.

One pupil interviewed in the production said: “Everything is wrong. The toilets are horrible, it’s cold in the winter and it’s roasting hot in the summer. I just want a new school because there’s mould all over the walls and it’s so bad that even the floor is sinking.”

Temple says: “We often have to put buckets in the classrooms and the kids have to bring all their books home every evening because when the roof leaks, the books are damp in the morning.

“It’s just very, very disheartening. This was at one stage Bertie Ahern’s constituency — he didn’t take care of us. The first class we ever had here will be doing their Leaving Cert this year — and we are still in prefabs.”

The Department of Education said officials had held a meeting with Dublin city council and Naomh Fionnbarra GAA club to discuss the possibility of land being released to allow for a new eight-classroom school to be built.

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