Madam, - Your reports on the schools crisis in suburban Dublin raise serious questions about our society, education itself and our planning system. The prospect of racially segregated education is something we must seek to avoid if we are to meet the challenge of integration in the future.
Many of the primary school pupils concerned could have told the Government that building houses also meant building schools to cope with an increasing population. While the lack of school places is the real issue, the attitude of the Catholic Church (after all the main provider of education) is exacerbating the situation.
They should be reminded that the taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for these schools. The State has deliberately excluded education from equality legislation. Does treating children unequally prepare them well to be equal citizens when they mature? Both these measures bolster the position of the Catholic Church in an era when its numbers and the numbers of those attending services are in decline.
Education is a basic right and should be available without condition to all children. Given the distances many Diswellstown residents will have to travel to their new school, perhaps a new bus service should be introduced complete with Rosa Parkes-style segregated seating. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL McLOUGHLIN, Riverwood Heath, Castleknock, Dublin 15.
Madam, - The current discussion regarding the provision of primary education in Balbriggan gives us, in this country, an excellent opportunity to reassess what we mean by national schools.When the system was established in 1831, these schools were, as the name implies, national schools, for all the children of the nation, irrespective of their religious allegiance. In the first decade of this national system, 3,500 schools came into being attended by over 400,000 children. The board, at national level, that administered these schools consisted of two Church of Ireland members, two Roman Catholics and two Presbyterians.
Unfortunately, after a while, the church authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, became worried that their children were being indoctrinated with heresy and so set up their own schools, and so we arrived at our present situation where our schools are denominational and not national schools in the true sense.
The Minister for Education says that her wish would be to see true community schools at primary level, where pupils of all faiths and none were welcome. Perhaps we could establish school boards at local level, which would be truly representative of all the communities that now live on this island, and so our schools would be National Schools once more. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL NUTTALL, Anglesborough, Co Limerick.
Madam, - While I agree with Archbishop Martin that the State has failed by not providing enough school places in north and west Dublin the crisis surrounding lack of school places is compounded by control of the vast majority of existing places being in the hands of the Catholic Church. When there is pressure on school places, the Catholic Church sees the function of Catholic-controlled national schools as serving the interests of Catholic children rather than all children, whatever their colour or creed.
In the Dublin 15 area, the boards of management of St Patrick's NS Diswellstown and St Mochta's NS in neighbouring Clonsilla implemented an enrolment policy where they discriminated on the grounds of religion. As differing church affiliation is largely aligned with ethnicity, this enrolment policy translates into a mechanism that racially segregates children in our schools. Only after this was highlighted in the media did Archbishop Martin "reluctantly" agree to patron another school, Scoil Choilm, for the children who were excluded from the two Catholic schools.
The injustice surrounding lack of access to local school places is not confined to those who are not in possession of the now requisite Catholic Baptismal certification. The parish authorities who control St Patrick's NS Diswellstown and St Mochta's NS Clonsilla devised a parish enrolment policy to maximise Catholic enrolment across its parish in Dublin 15. In order to achieve this objective, many Catholic children living adjacent to St Patrick's NS Diswellstown, in whose catchment area they lived, were refused places in their local school because the parish authorities wanted them to fill classes in St Mochta's NS which is a car commute away in Clonsilla. Archbishop's House in Drumcondra endorsed this parish enrolment policy and the Department of Education, through its silence on the matter, have also given it its approval.
This is in spite of the fact that the parish enrolment policy appears to be inconsistent with elements of the 1998 Education Act.
The archbishop talks about a fiefdom - if there is any fiefdom it is that operated by the Catholic parish authorities who currently have control of 100 per cent of school places in areas such as Diswellstown despite the fact that, as the archbishop says, only "50 per cent of the population see it as their preferred model".
If our local schools were run by the community for the community we wouldn't have the boards of management, who never engaged with the community on the issue of their enrolment policies, issuing diktats about what schools our children can or cannot attend. But as the situation currently stands, the community cannot elect or remove these boards of management and we have to endure whatever enrolment policies that they and the parish authorities decide are good for us.
We urgently need the Department of Education and the Government to deliver more schools and allow community participation in the running of these schools.
So, Ms Hanafin, where and when will we see the new Diswellstown primary VEC that was much trumpeted earlier in the year just before the general election? - Yours, etc,
DEREK BRADY, Luttrellstown, Dublin 15.