As a father of an 11-year-old who is a student at a special school I have been keenly following the debate on the opening of such institutions.
I applaud the sensible approach taken by most of the education stakeholders in reminding the education minister that it is currently not appropriate to open such schools.
As my daughter is particularly vulnerable to any respiratory infection it would be totally irresponsible to send her to school under the present circumstances. Therefore I will not do so.
Furthermore as she requires the most intimate of personal care while at school the potential of any transmission of the virus is increased.
I don’t want to be responsible for teachers becoming ill so that my daughter can be in school. The Government should stop virtue signalling on this issue and accept the reality of the situation.
Mark White
Mallow
Co Cork
Ministers making absolute shambles
The handling of the return to special education by the Government has been an absolute shambles. The SNAs were right to flag concerns in the face of school PPE budget cuts of 40%. That’s hardly right at a time when Covid-19 cases are most prevalent.
I am quite speechless after listening to Minister of State for Special Education and Inclusion Josepha Madigan maligning the SNAs. Disgusting commentary. Education Minister Norma Foley called the unions “disingenuous”.
Neither ministers have covered themselves in glory and now are on the attack in order to cover their own incompetence. They have just made it that bit harder to get around the table but do that they must and stop throwing personalised barbs across the airwaves at those upon whom they rely to provide vital services to our children with special needs.
Killian Brennan
Malahide Road
Dublin 17
Education delivery is in a state of flux
The flux which permeates the status of education delivery during the current Covid-19 crisis is surely unbecoming of any self-respecting government department.
Yes, it’s all such a novel scenario pertaining with a pandemic raging, but surely quicker decision-making re the tough decisions to be made was paramount to provide some clarity and comfort to those most in the line of fire — ie, Leaving Cert students and students with special needs.
Both deserve better.
It was, of course, to be so warmly welcomed that the ill-judged back-to-school timetable protocol for Leaving Cert students was reversed, not because those cohorts do not well deserve to avail of direct educational input, but that their own basic health survival safety, that of their families, teachers and of their communities be given prime consideration.
How the idea of anyone going back to school, while the country is to be almost fully shut down and with Covid-19 cases rampant, became a policy agreed by the full Cabinet and the Cabinet sub-committee on Covid-19, is flabbergasting.
What were they thinking of? Was it a pet vanity project of Micheál Martin to have schools operational against all obvious odds?
Why was Nphet’s advice twisted and tweaked to supply shallow and sham camouflage to construe such reckless nonsense?
Hopefully now, Norma Foley can opt to demonstrate both maturity and leadership in equal measure.
Jim Cosgrove
Lismore,
Co Waterford
Home victims will need redress
What a powerful article by Fergus Finlay Failure to address scandal would haunt country for years, Irish Examiner, January 19).
I could not be more in agreement. As usual the remedial actions put forward by the Government and communicated by the minister for children are so vague as to guarantee minimal resolution to an appalling situation.
The eventual outcome will sadly leave the victims without the redress they so deserve.
History is repeating itself like so many other injustices in our recent past.
John Burnett
Carrigaline
Cork
Blame politicians for social failures
Reading through Fergus Finlay’s column, I waited for his spotlight to fall on the politicians who the people elected to govern the country since the foundation of the State — I waited in vain.
The piece castigated the Church and the nuns and all but excused the politicians implying they were helpless bystanders in it all. Who else, if not those in government, could have intervened to stop it?
One wonders who will be found to take the blame when the avoidable suffering and damage being caused by current deprivations — homelessness, precarious access to utilities and other social goods — comes into plain view; probably on foot of another such investigation and report.
Will it be the charities that are currently trying to deal with these problems who will be rolled out for blame and chastisement in order to save the blushes of the real culprits?
An honest assessment of all social ills will invariably reach the same conclusion as to the primary cause, distributive injustice — a systemic problem only politicians and governments can eradicate.
Jim O’Sullivan
Rathedmond,
Sligo
Politicians could learn from Browne
I want to strongly support two letters which were published in the Irish Examiner on January 18.
Margaret Humphreys' Noel Browne was run out of office remembered not just a wonderful far-seeing minister for health, but also one of Ireland’s greatest men of the last century. The hardship that both he and his family endured as he was growing up was almost unbelievable, but he still managed to prevail and eventually played a major role in defeating TB, the scourge of the first half of the 20th century in Ireland.
His autobiography Against the Tide is a wonderful book, which every politician should read. Many of today’s politicians would not be fit to lace Browne's boots.
I fully agree with the sentiments in Patrick O’Brien’s letter Obscene salaries for top jobs in relation to some civil service pay deals.
If it was the politicians’ own money being paid out, I doubt they would pay it.
This is indeed a scandalous situation devised by our politicians who seem to have absolutely no idea how a country should be fairly run to ensure that everyone has a fair and reasonable income.
Liam Burke
Dunmore,
Co Kilkenny
Politicians led by religious deference
Margaret Humphreys wrote that former minister for health, Dr Noel Browne’s Mother and Child scheme (1951) was “obstructed by a well-organised opposition of Church and State”.
She is wrong in relation to the State. The scheme was drafted by Dr James Deeney, chief medical officer of the Department of Health; it was mooted by a previous minister (FF). Browne’s scheme was opposed by the Catholic bishops, who saw the State intruding on their patch, even though the State paid the bill.
They also feared the employment of doctors who didn’t sing from their hymn sheet and the introduction of birth control.
The other opponents were the general practitioners through their union, who saw a loss of income looming. They acted in consort.
Dr Browne was a member of a coalition government headed by Fine Gael’s John A Costello; readers of Costello’s biography will note that he wrote a fawning letter to the Pope pledging his allegiance to him — a matter today that would be seen as treasonable.
Browne was no team player at cabinet. His own leader, Sean McBride, another staunch Catholic, failed to support him. Browne’s main opponent in Cabinet was FG’s doctor, Tom F Higgins — later a presidential candidate for Fine Gael.
The next Minister for Health, Dr Jim Ryan, FF, was more diplomatic and achieved some success in this area. It is pitiful that many of our woes, the subject of a procession of governmental enquiries, are the result of the failure of politicians and senior civil servants to leave their religious deference aside when they attend to their constitutional obligations in a republic.
John Colgan
Leixlip,
Co Kildare
Vaccinations will be numbers game
Even those of us, who may hold less than a distinguished result in mathematics from Leaving Certificate exams during the 1960s or from any other era, must surely have come to a deeper appreciation of the practical usefulness of statistics in recent months.
An enlightenment which asserts that the critical statistics must now become: the number of people vaccinated to date and the actual vaccination rate per day.
These two figures will govern all the other data that we’ve become familiar with and frequently unnerved by since last March.
Michael Gannon
St Thomas’ Sq,
Kilkenny
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