The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, yesterday visited the home of a constituent to apologise after publicly tearing up and binning a letter her eight-year-old daughter gave him.
Amy Buckley presented the Minister with the letter demanding action on her sub-standard school, Summercove National School, in Kinsale. As her mother watched the Minister opened the letter, tore it up and stuffed it into a nearby litter bin.
The letter was part of a letter-writing campaign by the school's parents' association.
Amy and her mother, Ms Margaret Buckley, were caught in traffic in Kinsale on Friday when they spotted the Minister.
Ms Buckley asked her daughter to go over and hand him the letter. As the child was returning to the car, Mr Walsh looked at the letter, promptly tore it up and stuffed it in a nearby litter bin.
When Ms Buckley later confronted the Minister in the town he became angry, complained about the letter campaign, and told Ms Buckley that he had already brought the plight of the school to the attention of the Minister for Education, Dr Woods.
The chairwoman of the parents' association committee, Ms Susan Skelly-Mc Govern,approached Mr Walsh that evening. "I told him how disappointed I was at his behaviour. He didn't answer me, he just looked at me," Ms Skelly-McGovern said.
"As he began to walk away from me I reminded him that we had received two letters from him recently supporting our cause in the school and asked him if he still felt the same way.
"He just let fly at me verbally and said it was a disgrace the way we had organised the round-robin letters and that he might have read them if they had been written individually. 'How dare you write all those letters,' he said. He was ranting and raving at me," Ms Skelly-McGovern added.
Last night Mr Walsh issued a statement saying he had called to Ms Buckley's home earlier in the day and apologised for any offence his actions may have caused.
Ms Buckley had accepted the apology, the statement said, and both she and the Minister were working "in a spirit of co-operation" to further the best interests of the school.