THE 84 children of a small national school in Lettertrack, Co Galway, have written to the Taoiseach saying that they, as Irish children, want peace, no more violence and everyone talking together in Northern Ireland.
The school principal, Mr Leo Hallissey, said the idea arose yesterday morning in discussions between the four teachers and the pupils before classes started. They were talking about last week's ending of the IRA ceasefire, and some children said they could do nothing about it.
Mr Hallissey then pointed to the example of Ms Adi Roche and the Chernobyl Children's Project in Cork. "People way out on the edge, can actually influence things, he told them.
"We hope that children up and down the country will follow our example so that children can be part of this process and people will be aware that children suffer from the violence too", Mr Hallissey said yesterday.
Senior pupils then typed the following letter and it was signed on their behalf by two 12 year olds, Louise Heanue and Emma O'Neill. It read, We are a small school in north west Connemara. There are 84 pupils in our school All the pupils in our little school want peace in the whole island.
. We want peace
. No more violence
. Everybody must talk.
Mr Hallissey said the idea that his pupils should make this gesture came out of the experience of a gathering of tutors from 14 outdoor adventure centres all over Ireland, eight of them from Northern Ireland, at the Letterfrack National School the weekend before last.
This gathering, jointly organised by the Connemara Environmental Education Centre and the Tollymore Adventure Centre in the Mourne mountains, attracted tutors from Belfast and counties Down, Antrim and Fermanagh.
"We contrasted the wonderful sense of freedom of that occasion with the awful sense of gloom last weekend and felt we had to do something," said Mr Hallissey.