Despite the positive approach of staff and students, St Peter's National School is a Victorian experience, writes Louise Holden

Since 1812, St Peter's National school in Phibsborough has enjoyed two interventions: the introduction of indoor toilets and yard resurfacing. Otherwise, it's all original Victorian, complete with rotting windows, steep stone stairs, long breezy corridors and poor lighting.

I meet 24 eight-year-olds hunched in old wooden desks straight out of a Dickens novel. The windows behind them are covered in masking tape to minimise the drafts. A wood partition separates this group from another; the class in session next door might as well be taking place in the same room.

A class of junior infants files by on their way to the toilet. Toilet breaks are scheduled because there is no facility for girls. If pupils were free to use the toilets at will, the boys would not enjoy much privacy at the cracked and ancient urinals. Naturally, emergencies are catered for. The whole ground floor corridor smells strongly of urine despite the best efforts of staff to get rid of it. It's a stormy day, but even the wind howling down the corridors doesn't shift the smell.

St Peter's was never meant to be a co-ed school. For 187 years it was a boy's school and by 1999 it was badly in need of repair. Then the Department of Education and Science saw fit to amalgamate St Peter's Boys' National School with the local Girls' National School and Infant School. All three groups were brought to the same dilapidated building - more than 300 students and 20 staff.

The amalgamation came with the promise of a new building. Four years later and the new St Peter's is still a design on a CD-Rom. Nothing has progressed in the school since 1999; no refurbishment projects can be approved because the building is destined for demolition.

"The promise of the new building makes it impossible for us to make any improvements to our situation," says exasperated principal Joan Quinn. "I want to set up a computer room but I've been told there's no point until the new school is built. We try to keep the children's areas bright and habitable with the odd lick of paint but apart from that there's no point in investing anything in the place."

All Joan Quinn wants is a fixed date for the development. She and her staff have been in limbo for four years and cannot plan, develop or refurbish. She says she doesn't mind if she's told to wait another year or 18 months, as long as she has a timetable she can work around.

"The staff here have been so patient. They put in a huge effort to keep up the pupils' spirits when the rain is coming through the roof and the yard's too small to play games in. The parent's are amazingly supportive too; there's a great atmosphere in this school despite the conditions we have to put up with."

Quinn is right. There is an air of cheerful order about the place and the children are well-behaved. Nonetheless, it's hard to remain sanguine in the school yard. Overlooked by Dalymount Park, in the constituency of the Taoiseach, the yard is reminiscent of a supermarket loading-bay: grey, cramped and characterless. In the corner Victorian toilets, a row of urinals in an exposed shed, are still in use.

"Michael Woods and Bertie Ahern stood in this yard three years ago. I asked minister Woods to come and look at the toilets but he said he'd seen it all before," says Quinn, not without humour.

Make no mistake, without the enthusiasm and dedication of the staff at St Peter's this school would not be viable. The steep stone stairs that the children negotiate many times a day would have caused a major accident without their vigilance. The new primary-school curriculum, with its emphasis on circle time and liberation from the old class formation, could never have been implemented in these cramped dark classrooms without the staff's stubborn determination. The rotting windows and leaking roof would not have held together without caretaker Martin's 30 years of DIY.

St Peter's has no hot running water, has failed safety regulations, its draughty windows and high ceilings make it expensive to heat, the radiators leak, the lighting is poor, there are no sinks for art, the classrooms and play areas are tiny - the list goes on an on. According to Quinn the Department has been generous with resources for science and maths, but there's no room to use the equipment and no scope to develop the existing space.

"The school has been on hold for four years. We can wait a little longer if we have to, but we need to know how long."