SAOIRSE32

RTÉ

10 June 2006 19:27

The National Full-Time Fire-Fighters Committee at SIPTU has called for strict new legislation that would make it a specific crime to attack a member of the rescue services.

Chairman of the firefighters committee Brian Murray said similar legislation to that in place in Britain needed to be considered by the Government.

The call follows an attack on a fire engine in Dublin last night which left a male firefighter with serious facial injuries.

The firefighter was travelling in a fire engine in the Fairview area when he was struck by a missile.

There were a lot of people in the area who had attended the Robbie Williams concert in Croke Park, a large number of whom were queuing for northbound buses at a bus stop outside an auctioneers premises.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Clontarf Garda Station at 01-66648000 or any other garda station.

Times Online

The Times
June 10, 2006

A POLITICIAN, a sometime James Bond, a former Director-General of the BBC and one of Britain’s most popular poets are all alumni of the Brothers.

Gerry Adams, Pierce Brosnan, Lord Birt and Roger McGough were all beneficiaries of an education system founded by Edmund Ignatius Rice, a wealthy businessman from Co Waterford who sold up and devoted the rest of his life to the poor.

He opened his first school in Waterford in 1802 and the project swiftly spread throughout Ireland and beyond its shores, to English cities such as Liverpool.

In 1820 the Christian Brothers were the first Irish order of men to be formally approved by a charter from Rome. They were uncompromising in their attachment to core values of Catholicism and patriotism, with a shamrock nestling in their emblem among more religious symbols. Gaelic sports and language played a strong role and history lessons reflected a national sense of grievance at 800 years of English colonialism. The Brothers’ stated aims included the phrase “to fit the pupils under our tuition for the battle of existence”.

Mr Adams recalled being hit on his first day but did not seem to mind as he harboured a desire for a while to become a Christian Brother. He became a spokesman for the republican movement instead and is now MP for West Belfast and Sinn Fein president.

In a recent interview Brosnan remembered his unhappy days as a pupil under the Brothers before moving with his family to London. “You’d stand there saying the ‘Our Father’ and some little boy would come in late, and just because he was late, you could see the veins pop out of [the Brother’s] skull and you’d see the kid’s head crack against the door.

“You’d see him being kicked. You’d see a little boy up at the blackboard trying to get the sums right and he couldn’t, and he would be intimidated. And he would be whacked, ‘Get the sum right!’ — Whack! ‘Get the sum right!’ Whack! Until the s**t ran down his legs.”

Frank McCourt, author of the bestselling memoir Angela’s Ashes, was rejected by the Christian Brothers when his mother tried to secure him a place. In hindsight it was doubtless a blessing for the organisation to be spared Mr McCourt’s attention.

Irish Independent

THREE well-known personalities last night talked of their own experiences of the influence of the Christian Brothers on their lives.

1) Gay Byrne - broadcaster and chairman of the Road Safety Authority. Former student of Synge Street CBS

I left Synge Street in 1952 and we were one of the last generations of the school where physical punishment was part and parcel of everyday living.

Every morning I went there I would be faced with the reality that I would be belted for either one thing or another, except in 6th year where a Brother Bill O’Leary never hit us, and indeed he became a life-long friend.

Punishment would range from being hit with a hand, a stick, or a strap, to pulling up by the ears or the hair on the side of your head, but we never said a word about it at home because we would have got more of the same!

It was a very rough house but I must stress that if it wasn’t for the Christian Brothers we would never have been educated, because our parents just couldn’t afford it. To this day I am filled with wonder at the breadth of the extensive education they gave us considering there would be 40 to 50 in a classroom, with lads from allover Dublin.

There were the posh boys from places like Bray, Greystones and Foxrock; the less posh guys like me from Rialto and South Circular Road; and the lads from the Liberties whose families were stony broke.

The envelopes for the fees would go out every quarter, and I know for a fact that a lot of them came back empty, but this was all handled with great discretion.

I suppose their era has come and gone to a large extent. It is a great pity but in many ways inevitable.

2) Emmet Stagg - Labour Chief Whip and Kildare North TD. Former pupil of Ballinrobe CBS, Co Mayo.

The Christian Brothers were the greatest shower of savages and sadistic bastards I’ve met. In Ballinrobe we got the ones that had transgressed in Dublin. We were their punishment post.

Think about an 18-stone man pulling a young lad out of a seat, taking a pin from his collar and jabbing him repeatedly in the arse because he couldn’t remember a Latin word.

Not a day went by without a beating. I have a tooth missing because I was belted when I asked a question the day we did the Leaving Cert.

They are responsible for me becoming a socialist however.

There was a debating society in the school and I was once forced to give the pro side in a debate about Communism.

I read-up on George Bernard Shaw’s Socialism for Beginners and we were winning the debate when one head brother got up and gave me a clatter, saying “I won’t have any communist in this school.”

It was then I started learning all I could about Shaw, and my interest in politics was born.

The worst abuse was if you couldn’t afford the fees and applied for a dispensation. That meant getting a copy of your birth cert, which cost three shillings and sixpence. You would never be called by your name again. It was ‘three and sixpenny’ in front of everybody.

I’m delighted they’re getting out of education.

3) Gerard Mannix Flynn - Playwright and Actor. Former inmate of Letterfrack industrial school, run by the Christian Brothers.

The impact of the Christian Brothers on the Irish psyche is well documented. Some of it is positive, but a lot of it is extremely negative.

I was in Letterfrack from 1968 to 1970, and as a congregation their treatment of inmates was appalling. There was not one moment where I witnessed an act of kindness.

They might lighten up a bit at Christmas or Easter time, or on religious holidays, but that was about the best you got from them as a congregation.

It’s not that they are now pulling out of the system, you have to understand that they were the system, a system which nobody interfered with. They are removing their presence from the classroom, but they are still maintaining control.

This is damage limitation. All they are doing is getting out of a situation they totally destroyed.

Their reputation is on the floor, and their credibility is finished. They have ruined the good name they had and the good work they did in the early days by their denial of the substantive issues of abuse which were happening.

4) Noel Dempsey - Minister for Communications. Fianna Fail TD for Meath. Former Minister for Education. Former student of St Michael’s CBS, Trim, Co Meath.
I look upon my experience at the CBS as a very positive experience. I’d have absolutely no complaint. They were tough men but fair. Some were fond of using the strap but so were the lay teachers as well, sometimes even more so.

They gave me a good rounded education, which focused as much on sport as classroom subjects, something which I tried to carry forward when I was a teacher.

I do think it was inevitable that they would withdraw from the classroom. I could see it when I was Minister for Education. They were getting older and stretching themselves.

Now if they are working more on policy I think it will be of huge benefit to the education system.

They have a wealth of experience.

Conor Feehan

Irish Independent

Separate trust of lay people will be set up to take over schools

THE Christian Brothers are to end their direct involvement in Northern Ireland schools in addition to schools in the Republic.

A separate trust - also run entirely by lay people - will be given responsibility for the Northern schools.

At present the Brothers run three grammar, two secondary and three primary schools in the North.

As disclosed in the Irish Independent yesterday the Brothers are handing over their schools in the Republic to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST).

An update on the new arrangements will be outlined to principals of more than 100 Christian Brother secondary schools from all over the country next week.

The annual two-day conference in Dundrum, Co Tipperary, will be briefed on the roll-out of the process which starts with the issuing of a charter to all schools from September.

ERST will be both a civil legal entity and a canonical Church entity. It must have the approval of the bishops to act as a provider of Catholic schools.

It must also have the approval of the Department of Education and Science to act as a provider of schools recognised by the State in accordance with the Education Act (1998).

The civil legal entity will be a company limited by guarantee with no share capital.

It will be governed by its memorandum and articles of association. The company will be set up by its first members, called the Subscribing Members, and they will register ERST in the Companies Office.

A number of Charter Implementation Officers will be appointed to assist in the implementation of the Charter at school level. It is intended that each schools will establish a Charter Promotion Team, representing all the partners in the school community.

Next week’s meeting will be opened by Bro Michael Murray, Province Leader of St Helen’s Province. He will give a presentation on how the Brothers intend to restructure three provinces into one - St Mary’s and St Helen’s Provinces in Ireland and the UK province will be merged.

The setting up of ERST, the Northern Trust and a separate one for the UK, in addition to the amalgamation of the Provinces, is a watershed in the Brothers’ 200-year history.

They were at their peak in the Sixties with 947 teaching Brothers in secondary schools in the Republic - now there are only 18.

Apart from those teaching in schools, there are other brothers involved in St Helen’s Education Office where the director is a lay person, Conor O’Brien; while the project manager for the ERST is Brother John Heneghan.

He said the Brothers were not severing their involvement in education as they would continue with the Marino Institute and inner-city education projects.

Meanwhile, figures show that there are about 50 principals of voluntary secondary schools who are either priests or members of a religious congregation.

Official Department of Education figures show that there are about 660 religious and priests teaching in primary and secondary schools out of a total teaching force of 50,000.

About 300 of these are in primary schools and the remainder in second-level schools.

John Walshe