Traveller case ruling ‘condemns children’

Traveller rights group Pavee Point has said another generation of Traveller children could be condemned to “poverty, unemployment and social exclusion” because of school enrolment policies.

The comments came after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal made by the mother of a boy who had been denied a place in a secondary school in Clonmel in Co Tipperary.

Mary Stokes had brought the appeal after her son was was refused admission to the Christian Brothers High School in 2010. She had argued that the school’s enrolment policy — in which preference was given to the children of past pupils — was discriminatory towards Travellers on the basis that they would have been less likely to have attended the school.