Sir, – Your reports on the bomb threats sent to hundreds of schools, and on how parents might speak to their children about them (November 11th) brought me back to my childhood.
I grew up in a Border county in the 1980s, when bomb scares were common in Northern Ireland and, sadly, so were bomb explosions. The adults around us had a context in which to understand what was happening. The history, the politics, the geography and the terrorism were familiar. That familiarity offered little comfort, but it gave people some sense of what they were dealing with.
This week, a threatening email reached schools on both sides of the Border and similar threats reached newsrooms across several countries. Whoever is behind these messages remains largely invisible to those on the receiving end. We do not know enough about their identity or motives to say whether terrorism is the right word. Where do our schools fit into any of this? It is deeply unfair that children going about an ordinary school day should be caught up in it.
Growing up near the Border taught me the value of an ordinary day. There is something worth defending in the simple expectation that children will go to school, spend the day with their friends and come home with news of their own. Keeping that expectation alive takes judgment. We must take every threat seriously, act promptly when safety requires it and have the confidence to carry on when gardaí advise us it is safe to do so.
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The Government must now develop a national protocol for schools, developed with An Garda Síochána, that sets out how to report threats, how schools will receive timely advice and who will keep families informed. When the same message reaches hundreds of schools, there should be a way to co-ordinate reports and share the Garda assessment quickly. School leaders should be able to rely on that support from the moment a threat arrives.
We have little control over who presses send. We have a great deal of control over what happens next. If we expect the adults in our schools to stand before children and speak calmly and truthfully, the State must put them in a position to do so. That is how we protect both the safety of our children and their freedom to have an ordinary school day. – Yours, etc,
JOHN McHUGH,
Principal,
Ardscoil Rís,
Dublin 9.
