The National Parents' Council has welcomed yesterday's conviction of a Co Limerick primary school principal for an assault on a 12-year-old pupil. The primary teachers' union, the INTO, said it had warned its members 15 months ago that corporal punishment was now a criminal act.
In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, Laurence Begley, principal of Mountcollins national school on the Limerick-Kerry border, was fined £50 after pleading guilty to the assault. An earlier court had heard that he had caught the boy by the side-locks, pulled his hair and struck him on the back of the head when he failed to answer a maths question last March.
A National Parents' Council (Primary) spokeswoman, Ms Fionnuala Kilfeather, said the council was pleased to see the State using the 1996 Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act to send out "a strong signal about how we expect our children to be treated".
She said the court's decision challenged parents as well as teachers. "We as a nation need to look again at physical punishment in the home, not just in schools."
The INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, said that in October 1997 the union's magazine had warned that "from now on a teacher against whom allegations of corporal punishment are made could be charged with a criminal offence under the 1996 Offences Against the Person Act and if the case were proven, would be guilty of a criminal act".
Begley's solicitor told the court his client had been active in local development and anti-drugs programmes in west Limerick. After 27 years' teaching, he had already suffered great punishment by his exposure in the national media after a single unpremeditated act. As the sole breadwinner for a family of eight, he was also facing financial ruin because of civil proceedings which would follow the criminal case.
However, the solicitor for the boy's family said the assault was not an isolated case, and they had never seen any remorse from Begley until his guilty plea in court.
The Department of Education said it would be writing to the school's board of management, as Begley's employer, to ask for its view of the incident and the court's decision. The board did not suspend him after the incident. However, it will now have to deal with the complaint from the boy's family through its own procedures as well as take into account the civil case pending against him.
Court report: page 9