Some schools set for shortened Christmas holidays [IrishExaminer]
- Published: 20 December 2010
Schools may open early after Christmas, because of days missed as a result of the arctic weather, the Department of Education said today.
Department officials say they have contacted school management bodies in relation to the options for making up for lost time.
However, in a statement from the Department, it admits that this would require an adjustment to the standardised school year.
The Irish Primary Principals Network claims the days missed may never be made up.
ENDS
Full Story: www.irishexaminer.com
State squanders tens of millions on sites for schools it never built [Independent.ie]
- Published: 20 December 2010
THE State spent tens of millions of euros buying sites for new schools at the height of the boom which have never been built.
Schools on 35 sites, costing more than €42m, are still only on the design and planning stages -- with no progress at all on others.
This is despite 1,200 schools across the State looking for new buildings or extensions.
And the value of some of the sites has sharply fallen -- one 20-acre site in Laytown cost almost €9m in 2007, and is now worth less than half that.
Another in Glasthule in Dublin cost €7m and is likely to be worth just €4m today.
Some of the sites were bought as far back as 1978, but most were bought in the mid-2000s when land prices were at their highest.
Full Story: www.independent.ie
'Unless you have minister's ear, nothing gets done' [Independent.ie]
- Published: 20 December 2010
WHEN Mike O'Connor bec-ame principal of St Brendan's National School in Blenn-erville, Co Kerry, in 1996, one of the first things he did was apply for a new school, writes Paul Melia.
The existing school was built in 1932, and had four classrooms. Today, one measuring 19 feet by 18 feet is home to 27 pupils, a teacher and special needs teacher. A second room much the same size holds 28.
"You're trying to run a modern classroom. If someone gave me a computer I wouldn't have anywhere to put it," he said. "In April 2000, the department sent us a letter granting us a new school."
Full Story: www.independent.ie
Croke Park deal slow to deliver on public-sector reform [Independent.ie]
- Published: 19 December 2010
THE Croke Park Agreement promises to reform the public sector as an efficient workforce, ready and willing to go where needed, no more arcane perks or liberal sick leave. Six months since it was ratified, the best that can be said about the deal is that its public-sector signatories haven't gone on strike despite all that is being asked of them.
This was the primary boast of Dara Calleary, the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, who gave an update on the agreement's progress to the Seanad last Wednesday. He said changes were being implemented "on a daily basis", but when he went on to list them the tangible reforms seemed few. But wasn't it good, went his argument, that public sector workers are still doing the job, without threatening industrial action, despite their two pay cuts and having to take up the slack left by colleagues gone from the system through "natural wastage".
Given the dire state of the economy, rescued by a European bailout, it's the very least that could be expected from a constituency whose wages account for so much of Government spending.
Agreed between unions and management in the dying days of the economy, it promised greater efficiencies and industrial peace in return for no further pay cuts until 2014.
Full Story: www.independent.ie
What a shocker: no more books to ban [IrishTimes]
- Published: 18 December 2010
After 80 years of censorship from a board once internationally notorious for its prurience, the last remaining book to be banned in Ireland on the grounds of obscenity will have its prohibition lifted this year, writes John Byrne
NOT MUCH would appear to link Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley’s satirical 1928 dynamiting of the foibles of the British intelligentsia, and The Base Guide to London, “an educational guide to surviving . . . the seedy side” of the English capital, from 1998. Separated by 70 years, a World War and radical changes in social mores, they may seem strange bedfellows, but these two titles represent the alpha and omega of book censorship by the State.On May 9th, 1930, a year after the passing of the initial Censorship of Publications Act, Huxley’s novel became the act’s first casualty. Banned on the grounds that it was “indecent and obscene”, it earned the dubious historical honour of being recorded as the first entry in the first volume of the Register of Prohibited Publications. Sixty-eight years and 12,491 prohibitions later, The Base Guide remains the final entry in the register’s final volume.
In the 12 years since this last prohibition, the Censorship of Publications Board – at one time internationally notorious for its prurience and moral conservatism – has not banned a single title. It’s the longest such interval in the history of the State and a remarkable statistic for a body whose ceaseless opposition to “indecency”, “obscenity” and family planning saw it issue 1,034 prohibitions in one particularly zealous year (1954).
More importantly, as the decade’s end approaches, 80 years on from the censorship board’s first meeting, a landmark in the history of Irish censoriousness will have been reached. Under the terms of the 1967 Censorship of Publications Act, books deemed “indecent or obscene” have their prohibitions revoked after 12 years.
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
