A chara, – I wish to express my profound shock, disbelief and outrage at one aspect of the proposed changes to school enrolment policies put forward by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn (Home News, April 3rd).
This policy has no place in the 21st century; indeed it was outrageous in the 19th century when it was first introduced.
I refer to the proposal to force some Irish-speaking children from Irish-speaking families to attend English-speaking schools. This will happen because under the guidelines Irish language schools will not be permitted to give priority to children from Irish speaking families.
Irish-speaking families are a threatened minority in this State, all have made a lifelong commitment to the survival of the language by speaking it every day, and their children, especially at secondary level often travel long distances to their nearest Irish language school.
Like many of today’s policies, it discriminates yet again, disproportionately against rural areas because Irish-speaking families such as ourselves who live in rural Ireland find ourselves outside the catchment areas or feeder schools for existing Irish language secondary schools which are few in number
Apart from being oppressive, this policy is clearly absurd, and bizarre. As an Irish-speaking family it seems an act of wanton cruelty to provide such schools and then to deny entry to those of us who most passionately want to make use of them. – Is mise,
SÉAMUS Ó DRISCEOIL,
Oileán Cléire
Co Chorcaí.