School funding

Dempsey’s threats put lives at risk.

It would appear that this country has entered an era of governance by omerta, as expressed by the barely concealed threat to parents by Education Minister Noel Dempsey yesterday.

At a press conference to announce details of next year’s building programme for schools, the minister had the audacity to infer that where parents protest about the condition of the school their children are attending, financial sanctions will be imposed on that school.

This unacceptable, insidious ultimatum was issued in the context of Gortahork National School in Donegal. There, the parents withdrew the 119 pupils eight days ago because of rat-infested classrooms and the danger of E-coli from sewage seeping onto the playground.

The parents have been conducting a campaign for several months to have the 74-year-old school improved so it no longer poses a threat to the health of their children. Eight days ago their patience ran out.

Mr Dempsey is obviously indifferent to their concerns, but not to the image of his department. Yesterday, he made that quite clear and the message to parents is starkly simple. If they protest about the condition of schools, those schools will not get funding.

He also proved his point graphically. At the press conference he singled out the protest in the Donegal school for particular mention and that point was reinforced by the fact that it is not included in the building plans for next year.

Quite simply it is intimidation and taxpayers’ money is being used in an unconscionable fashion to browbeat parents into silence. It is all the more ominous in that it reflects an official, calculated denial of funding to protect the health of young children.

The ministerial self-importance was compounded when it was put to him that those parents in Donegal were being punished. His conceited response was that he was definitely not considering a school where the children had been taken out. If anybody wanted to call that punishment, they could.

Mr Dempsey’s arrogance is breathtaking and it warrants a public apology at least to those parents he has insulted in a monumental way.

In deciding where public money is to be spent, the criteria should not be influenced by a minister’s prejudices or by his temerity to attempt to control the constitutional rights of people to protest.

The minister presides over a department which has, rightly, come in for severe criticism because of the appalling state of other schools around the country.

Not so long ago, pupils and teachers at St Nessan’s school in Mungret, Co Limerick, had a narrow escape when a ceiling caved in. There are too many other schools where accidents are waiting to happen and some day there will be other young children who may not be so lucky.

The minister’s cavalier attitude to such a crucial issue of public health cannot, and should not, be countenanced.

When the public read headlines of multi-million euro funding being provided for the likes of Punchestown racecourse, while some of our schools languish in deplorable conditions, the conclusion has to be that the priorities of this Government are driven by self-interest and expediency.