Sir, – Finally! A coherent argument on the reason why parents should not be penalised for sending their children to fee-paying schools (Mary Mitchell-O’Connor, Opinion, October 11th).
There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth about the unfairness of it all, discrimination, etc; but the real discrimination here is that children in fee-paying schools receive less subvention than those in State-funded schools. “Poor taxpayers” are therefore not subsidising fee-paying schools. Rather it is the struggling parents who scrape the fees together for private education who are subsidising State-funded schools because their own children cost each taxpayer less to educate – an elementary equation to confound even the most entrenched philosophies.
So could I request the begrudgers to allow parents to have a choice – if they prefer pints, cigarettes, new cars and holidays in Tenerife to private education then that is their choice. Allow others to make their own priorities. – Yours, etc,
GEOFF SCARGILL,
Loreto Grange,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.