North Mon parents vow to chain themselves to school gates

Parents of pupils at Cork’s North Monastery primary school have vowed to chain themselves to the gates as they insist plans to move the boys into a merger with a nearby convent school will not go ahead.

While a large poster on the main railings says applications are being taken for next September, a planned move by the trustees would see it closed down and amalgamated across the road with the St Vincent’s Convent primary.

The principal of Scoil Mhuire Fatima, one of three schools at the 203-year-old North Mon education campus on the city’s northside, told an impromptu meeting the move would happen “over my dead body”, as parents were urged to fight the proposal by the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST).