TUI under fire over claims ‘designer’ difficulties help pupils skip Irish

PARENTS and supporters of children with dyslexia have hit out at suggestions that pupils opting out of Irish are using ‘designer’ learning difficulties to get exemptions.

New figures from the Department of Education have revealed a surge in secondary school students gaining exemptions from studying Irish.

Some 9,907 pupils with learning difficulties were granted exemptions in 2004, 11,172 in 2005 and 11,871 in 2006. In all three years over half of those pupils went on to study at least one modern European language.