Madam, - As a practising GP in Diswellstown, west Dublin, for the past 10 years, and a mother of three small children, I am dismayed at the impact of the schools crisis in Dublin 15.
By May this year, 90 local children, some approaching six years of age, had not received a school place as they did not possess a Catholic baptismal certificate. Catholic children, however, some of whom had just turned four, were offered places in our local schools.
For the past five months in my surgery I have dealt with the anguish, confusion and humiliation endured by the parents of non-Catholic children in their attempts to secure school places for their children. With the opening of an emergency school, Scoil Choilm, we now have the sight of these small boys and girls boarding a bus outside our surgery every morning to take them to their temporary school premises in Blanchardstown village.
These children were discriminated against and they are now segregated. I am deeply ashamed of our Government and of our system of education that allows this blatant discrimination. I am a Catholic, but in my profession I am privileged to care for all regardless of their race or religion.
Mary Hanafin is the Minister for Education, not the Minister for Catholic Education. I believe she is in dereliction of her duties by allowing this situation to have happened and to continue to happen.
I reject her promotion of a school's right to protect its ethos as a defence of this disaster.
Equal access to local schools should be a basic right for all children. Look to the children, Minister: they do not discriminate against each other and we should not teach them to do so. - Yours, etc,
Dr MYRA LYNCH, Luttrellstown, Dublin 15.