Concern as gaelcholáiste cuts pupil intake

Children who want to be taught through Irish will have to be driven past a local school on Cork’s northside to others several miles away because of a one-third cut in intake, a councillor has claimed.

Gaelcholáiste Mhuire AG at the North Monastery is only admitting 58 pupils next September. This was announced in an enrolment policy published this week. The school accepted more than 80 first-year students in each of the last three or four years.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn allowed the Edmund Rice School Trust (ERST) to replace the board with a temporary manager earlier this year after disagreement between trustees and the board, largely on whether to continue enrolling three first-year classes. The new policy says space is no longer available for three classes in Sept 2014.