Court orders school fees payment

A divorced couple have been ordered to pay nearly €3,000 in outstanding school fees in a case described by a judge as “desperately unfortunate”.

Sandford Park School in Ranelagh sued Ken and Emer Lee over the non-payment of €2,782 in fees outstanding for the second half of the 2009/2010 school year.

Mr Lee said he had discharged more than €340,000 in debts since the couple’s home in Stepaside had been sold, but he had refused to pay the outstanding fees to Sandford because of the manner in which his son Daragh, who was going into his Leaving Certificate year, had been treated.

Reading from a prepared script at the Dublin District Court, Mr Lee said the decision of the school to send his son home from school on August 26th last year, the first day of the school year, was “deliberate, reckless, ruthless and without any regard for my son’s welfare” and that his son had been targeted as a warning to other parents who might not pay fees.

He said the school had not taken to account Daragh’s childhood battle with cancer nor his parents' divorce.

He also stressed he had given his word that the fees would be paid once the family home was sold, but that had been rejected by Sandford.

Both the bursar of the school, David Townsend, and the chairman of the board of governors, retired banker Brian McConnell, said they had made it “crystal clear” to the couple in May last year and in a follow-up letter in June that outstanding fees needed to be paid before the start of the academic year 2010/2011.

Mr McConnell told the court the school had a policy of not carrying over outstanding amounts from one year to another because parents would get into further debt.

He said he had shown the couple a “great deal of forbearance” because they had also missed payments in 2009 although they were eventually paid up.

He told Judge Mary Collins they would have considered accepting an undertaking the school fees would be paid once the family home was sold but that no such undertaken was given.

He said this made the school doubt if Mr Lee, a former RTÉ news visual mixer, could afford the €6,800 school fees for the following year.

Judge Collins said the person most affected by what had transpired was Daragh. She recounted a conversation with a “respected and wealthy” Irish businessman whose parents had to take him out of a fee-paying school when he was 15, but who did not let it defeat him. She hoped that Daragh would be able to turn into a “fine young man” despite the adversity he faced.

The judge stated the couple’s solicitors’ reluctance to give an undertaking in relation to the proceeds of the sale of the house meant the school could not be confident of getting its money. She ordered the couple to pay the outstanding fees but made no order for costs.