Sir, – Considering the downgrading of primary education in this Gaeltacht island carried out by Minister for Education Jan O'Sullivan's department under her party colleague and predecessor Ruairí Quinn, it is very difficult to take her department's concern for Gaeltacht schools seriously ("Policy proposals for education provision in Gaeltacht areas", May 6th).
This island is one of about three Gaeltacht islands which have been downgraded by her department’s redeployment scheme. Less than three years ago our primary school (the only primary school on the island) was targeted for downgrading to single-teacher status. Islands generally, including Gaeltacht islands, are treated exactly the same as mainland schools under her department’s policy. When the roll numbers fell, our second teacher, who had worked most of her adult life here, was given impossible redeployment choices, such as resource teaching in three mainland schools involving two one-hour boat journeys in open Atlantic conditions and three car journeys on the mainland daily (she had no driving licence), returning home at 7.30pm. Or alternatively, redeployment to an all-Irish school in Galway city, which would involve family break-up. She took early retirement.
When Ms O’Sullivan’s department accepts that it is impossible to operate an island primary school maintaining reasonable standards where two children are in sixth class and three more are in junior and senior infants, and that imposing such a regime is a deprivation of island children’s rights, and when she reverses her department’s redeployment policy for the three to five island schools that are involved, only then can her well-publicised policy proposals be considered as anything other than some pre-election window dressing. – Yours, etc,
TARLACH de BLÁCAM,
Inis Meáin,
Cuan na Gaillimhe.