Mags Gargan
Pro-choice campaigners. Parents have expressed their outrage at the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ movement after campaigners handed out leaflets to children at the gates of a Dublin school.
Members of the ‘Dublin North West Repeal the Eighth’ group, a collection of pro-choice residents of Dublin 9 and 11 who say they are “committed to campaigning across our constituency to repeal the 8th”, were reported to be handing out campaign leaflets to schoolchildren leaving the Dominican College on Griffith Avenue, a Catholic secondary school for girls.
Leaflet
One father told The Irish Catholic his daughter received a leaflet when she was leaving the school last Friday following an exam. “I think it is outrageous that they would target children – it should be against the law,” he said, continuing “a number of other parents have also complained about it.
“If it was pro-life people handing out leaflets under the same circumstances there would be uproar,” he said.
Cora Sherlock of the Pro-Life Campaign said “certainly giving out leaflets like that is questionable”. “It is a very political way of addressing the issue and the repeal movement is a very political movement.”
Opinion
She said if it was a pro-life group handing out leaflets at a school “then it would be all over Liveline, you’d have the school principal asked what was their opinion, you would have a spokesperson from the group called in – you can imagine the outcry. It would be national news essentially.
“When it is one of the pro-choice groups then it either does not get reported on or if it does it just very much goes under the radar. I think the inequality of the two positions is the real issue,” she said.
Deputy Principal at Dominican College, Marguerite Norris, told The Irish Catholic the school was “not aware” of the incident.