Madam, - The recent controversy over water charges for primary schools distracts from the main problem facing Irish schoolchildren, which is gross educational inequality. No primary school receives sufficient funding from the Department of Education to meet its running costs and must either do without valuable equipment such as computers and modern teaching technology or face an annual shortfall.
Schools in better-off areas turn to parents and commercial sponsors while those in the poorer areas, whose parents cannot afford to subsidise their local schools, simply have to do without. This is just not acceptable.
- Yours, etc,
BRENDAN McCABE, Headfort Park, Kells, Co Meath.