Paul Keenan‘Palpable fear’ within community
A Catholic priest in Co. Donegal has said Protestant schools in the county now face “annihilation” due to cut-backs and restructuring.
Fr John Joe Duffy of Stranorlar, who, together with the Church of Ireland’s Rev. John Deane of Ardara, has led a campaign since 2012 to highlight the pressures faced by small schools in Donegal in the face of austerity cuts, this week warned that the county’s Protestant schools have become especially vulnerable to restructured pupil-teacher ratios which have seen schools placed under threat of closure unless minimum pupil numbers are maintained.
“The number of pupils required for a one-teacher school has jumped from 12 to 20,” Fr Duffy pointed out, adding that this is having a major effect on the minority Protestant community’s schools, a number of which fall into the one-teacher category.
“There is palpable fear among the Protestant community that this is going to annihilate their schools,” he revealed.
Pointing to the resulting absorption of pupils from closed schools to larger non-Protestant schools, Fr Duffy said this made the loss of identity for the county’s Protestant community a very real threat.
“They will be absorbed, they will lose their identity,” he warned, “and where schools close, the particular community linked with them ultimately leaves.” Fr Duffy added that what is affecting the Protestant community now will similarly affect Gaeltacht schools.
Funding
Describing current funding realities in Irish schools as a “terrible crisis”, Fr Duffy voiced his disappointment with opposition parties, who, he said, “are doing nothing for rural Ireland” as the elements holding communities together are steadily eroded. “Post offices are closing,” he said, “and now schools.”
Since harsh cut-backs were levelled on schools around Ireland, the Catholic and Protestant communities in Donegal have engaged in meetings towards seeking a united answer to the crisis.
“Church of Ireland schools feel they’re being let down,” Fr Duffy said of his experiences of the meetings.
“We as a majority should protect the minority,” he said.