Letters to the Editor: Irish parents face headache over school choices
Who would want to be a parent trying to decide where to send their child to secondary school, asks Tom McElligott. Picture: File
Take a small town like Listowel with its three secondary schools; one all-boys, one all-girls, and a co-educational school. All doing well, seemingly, with significant investments ongoing in all three.
Take a closer look though, at their mission statements, to reveal key differences. The all-boys school states it is a “modern educational community which puts its faith and ethos as a Catholic school at the heart of each of its activities; academic and extracurricular”.
The co-ed secondary school says: “Students of all religions and beliefs are treated equally. The school environment and activities do not privilege any particular group over another whilst at the same time acknowledging and facilitating students of all religions and beliefs.”
Meanwhile, the all-girls school in Listowel says it is a “Catholic voluntary secondary school for girls, operating under the trusteeship of Ceist [Catholic Education an Irish Schools Trust]".
"While developing a sense of her personal responsibility each student is enabled to reach her full potential and to take place in the adult world as a confident young woman who values honesty, justice, and commitment to work.”
Who would want to be a parent in 2024, trying to decide where to send their children after they leave primary education? Apart from Malta, Ireland has the highest percentage of single-sex secondary schools in Europe.
It’s my contention that such egregious, menacing threats against politicians is an attack on democracy itself.
I am acutely aware that the debate persists over whether these political threats are emanating from the far-right or left.
It’s my humble opinion that it is all academic. I believe that the immediate concern should revolve around the fact that everywhere in the democratic world, or so it seems to me, conventional politics is at risk of sinking under the weight of violence.
Many of these attacks fall under the rubric of it being verbal, virtual, digital, and physical.
I am sorry to say that at present, defences against it appear to me to be wafer-thin to non-existent.
I believe it’s time for the powers that be to respond decisively and determinedly to this existential threat.
The Irish Government must act unilaterally. According to the United Nations ComTrade database on international trade, Ireland imported goods from Israel to the value of $3.9bn in 2023.
Additionally, Ireland is exporting dual-use items to Israel that can be used for military use. It has, in the past at least, imported drones from Israel and may still do so. We all know what Israeli drones are used for in Gaza.
And in recent days we read that Ireland is unbelievably exporting Irish beef to Israel, so we are essentially feeding the Israeli military as it merrily goes about its killing spree in Gaza.
As we gathered for an emergency lunchtime protest outside the Department of Foreign Affairs on Monday, we had one message for Micheál Martin and Simon Harris: It is time to move beyond talk and instead walk the walk for Gaza and finally impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on the apartheid terror state of Israel.
- 1. We urge the Government to extend the Vat exemption to our profession. This would bring counsellors and psychotherapists into line with the exemption available to psychologists and other health professionals. This would ensure equitable treatment and remove the burden of taxation on clients when paying for essential therapeutic services;
- 2. Expand tax relief for counselling and psychotherapy services so that they are deemed an eligible expense in line with other health expenses. According to our recent survey, conducted by Behaviour & Attitudes, 88% of Irish adults think these services should be included as a tax relief benefit similar to other day-to-day medical expenses;
- 3. Once the Pilot Programme of Counselling in Primary Schools concludes, we are calling for school-based counselling to be made permanent and available to all students in primary and secondary schools across the country.
We believe these initiatives would increase access and affordability to much-needed therapeutic services for those who need them the most.
I, and a lot of my 60-ish generation, will not go near O’Connell St due to fear. Fear of encountering drug dealers, drug users, aggressive beggars, far-right activists, riots, etc.
Why not move public celebration events around to other places like sports stadiums, arenas, public parks, or St Stephen's Green?
I believe the riots of last year and the ongoing degeneration of O’Connell St should preclude it from this public celebration exclusivity for the time being.
Over many years the PDF (permanent defence force), its supports, and benefits have been pared back to the point where it has lost many traditional barracks and even defence systems such as coastal defence.
For some time, we have closed down married quarters and military hospitals and have failed to house every military person who needs accommodation.
In my view, departmental control on equipping and housing our PDF has been suppressive and contributes to uneasiness and a wish to try elsewhere. It could also be a factor that executive-level officers in the DoD need to experience staff-level training in a military college to improve perspective on defence needs.
There’s a lot to be said for a long life. Watching Edna O’Brien being laid to rest, I couldn’t help thinking how different things would have been if she’d died young, say, after the publication of . Would the same luminaries have attended her funeral; would the obsequies have sounded different?
We’ve come a long way. May she rest in peace.
The suggestion is that this is somehow an unjust imposition on the cohort paying.
The fact of the matter is that this particular statistic underlines a major problem here and that is the grossly unjust distribution of income. Those paying no or little income tax are stuck on poverty-level wages and do not reach the threshold at which income tax becomes payable.
The solution is, of course, a fairer distribution of incomes. This would make the vast majority of citizens liable for income tax and create a more just and harmonious society in the process.
