Facing up to crisis in the public finances [Irish Times Letters Page]
- Published: 12 February 2009
Source: Irish Times Letters Page
Madam, ; I cried when I heard the news that 900 primary schoolchildren with learning difficulties are to lose their resource teachers in further cutbacks against vulnerable children by Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe. At the same time, the Government is spending €7 billion bailing out the banks and details have emerged of the massive pay-outs being given to the former financial regulator.
How have we become a country where our leaders believe it is acceptable to sacrifice the education of our weakest children to fund the very people who have been responsible for so much of our current problems?
I'm not a sentimental fool. I do understand the big picture. There is a global economic crisis and we are only a part of this. The banks and the Government can't be blamed for everything and savings have to be made.
But sometimes you have to look at the small picture too. In the boom times, children with special needs received a Cinderella service with parents throughout the country having to battle for every little concession they got. Now we are in recession, what little they did get is being eroded in a series of cuts. This is wrong, and we should not support it, whatever the bigger picture. ; Yours, etc,
CAITRÃONA MAC AONGHUSA,
Myrtle Park,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
Madam, ; One recoils in disgust from the latest cuts in education affecting "children with mild learning disabilities". Cowardly in their design and cruel in their implementation, these cuts are targeted at the most vulnerable members of our society ; children who cannot be properly taught in normal schoolrooms.
What astonishes, however, is not merely the callousness of the cuts, but their petty meanness. The savings brought about by these measures could hardly be commensurate with the long-term, intractable and wholly unforeseeable damage they will cause to young lives. And it will not only be special-needs children and their parents who will lose out: the cost, in teaching time and effort, of reintroducing special-needs children to regular classes will be incalculable. In short, all children will lose out.
We should call this what it is: a national disgrace. Rarely has a Government loved by so few so actively sought the scorn of so many. ; Yours, etc,
SEÁN COLEMAN,
Lindisfarne Lawn,
Dublin 22.
