State’s dereliction of duty forces parents to cough up cash for schools

MARY HANAFIN told me there’s no compulsion or obligation to pay the money and that anyone who doesn’t want to do so or cannot afford to do so should have no difficulty in saying no when asked for it.

But when the latest request arrived this week from the primary school my three girls attend, I didn’t feel emboldened enough by Ms Hanafin’s entreaties to refuse payment. Ms Hanafin may be the Education Minister — and she gave me my reassurance live on national radio — but I can’t bring her along with me to the school. I can’t march her into the principal’s office and get her to say, “This man doesn’t believe he should pay and I support him in that.”

As any parent of a school-going child will realise, I’m writing about “voluntary contributions” to the upkeep and running of local schools. Parents have become used to requests for money from schools, of which there’s hardly one in Ireland which has enough money to meet its daily running costs after it has paid its teachers. To make up the shortfall, schools are reduced to begging from the parents.