It Occurs To Me: Foley goes for a two-pointer and Donegal’s ‘Castle’ highlighted

Usually, when you mention solo runs and Kerry in the same sentence, it conjures up a picture of David Clifford ‘cleaning’ some poor unfortunate defender just before he rattles the net.

I was trying to watch Norma Foley on the RTÉ News last week, but the reflection from her latest brooch nearly blinded me!

She’s good at blindsiding, and as minister for education managed to survive a number of gaffes that might have sunk someone else with the required measure of competence but with the humility to acknowledge the mistakes.

Norma Foley been accused of yet another notorious ‘solo run’

Once again - this time as minister for children, disability and equality - she’s been accused of yet another notorious ‘solo run’, this time by the INTO, which also castigated her “profound breach of trust”.

Donegal man John Boyle, general secretary of INTO, was livid. He reiterated that teachers “cannot continue to respond to a rolling cycle of ministerial pronouncements and initiatives while the necessary supports for children with special education are still not where they need to be.

“Teachers were not consulted, briefed or even informed in advance of these proposals. That is bad faith, pure and simple. Our position is clear and unwavering. Meaningful consultation is the absolute minimum that should be expected when any changes are proposed to a system that has been dogged by controversy and concern for years.

“It is grossly unfair that government departments are using vulnerable children as political footballs after failing to provide them with timely assessments and therapeutic supports.”

The INTO said the “shocking” announcement by the minister came after a DCU study found high levels of stress and burnout among teachers in Ireland.

“Teachers already under intense strain cannot be expected to absorb further major system change, particularly when announced through the media rather than formal channels of consultation,” Boyle added.

And that the union had been calling for an independent review of teacher workload similar to the model recently concluded in Northern Ireland, “not for another layer of cosmetic changes. The intent could not be clearer. A minister in charge of a broken system is attempting to shift responsibility.”

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He further accused the department of treating principals, special education teachers and mainstream class teachers “with profound disrespect” and said they would not accept any further erosion of their working conditions “for political expediency by a Minister who has shown such disregard for them.”

Teachers and parents alike agree that the old AON (Assessment of Needs) was cumbersome and lethargic…to date, almost 19,000 children are waiting on assessment. Under Norma’s new system, assessments will only need to identify the additional needs of the child, rather than a diagnosis of disability.

The problem once again - as happened when the old system was foisted on educators - is a serious lack of consultation, as outlined by John Boyle. Also, although teachers are professional, they are not all trained in special needs. Even special needs teachers have come from the classroom in the main.

For any system to work properly, it invariably fails if it’s from the top down…it must emanate from the bottom up. Norma should have a chat with Jack O’Connor…an odd ‘solo run’ will never win All-Irelands if you don’t have a ‘team’ game.

The Republic of Shame

I just finished Caelainn Hogan’s harrowing account of the fate of the so-called ‘fallen women’ of Ireland, The Republic of Shame.

“This was not a subculture,” she writes, “This was a mainstream set of experiences hidden in plain sight.”

We are familiar with many horror stories of mother-and-baby homes and Magdalene Laundries, and this book is another visceral slap in the gut. In 2017, Enda Kenny declared in the Dáil that all of society was responsible for the “chamber of horrors” revealed in the Bons Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam.

Acknowledging the harm done by orders of the Catholic Church – and the work of historian Catherine Corless in exposing it – Kenny insisted on apportioning blame much more widely. “No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children,” he said.

“We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care. We gave them up maybe to spare the savagery of gossip, the wink and the elbow language of delight – in which the ‘holier than thous’ were particularly fluent. And we gave them up because of our perverse, in fact morbid, relationship with what you call respectability”.

Closer to home, in a chapter called The Castle, Hogan writes: “In October of 2018, I was in Donegal with a friend, visiting her aunt. On the way back to Dublin, I asked if we could make a detour to Newtowncunningham, a small town between Letterkenny and Derry city. I had seen images of an abandoned building that was once a mother-and-baby home called the Castle. There was hardly any information about the Castle in the public domain.

"When we got to Newtowncunningham, the old boarded-up house was visible from the road, set back from its gates in an overgrown field. When I raised the subject of the institutions with people, the conversation usually went one of two ways. They either became suddenly tight-lipped, talking about the good the Church did or how ‘those were the times’, or else they started very suddenly to tell you intensely personal stories about loved ones or experiences they’d had themselves. Sometimes they did both.

“In 2000, a total of 15 women were admitted to the Castle, and in 2001 there were 10 admissions, including ‘three not pregnant’. Were these women who panicked after a sexual encounter? Or had they come with a child or children needing some other kind of help? The last years of the Castle saw a growing number of admissions of children – in some cases the older kids of pregnant women, but in other cases apparently child-protection cases.

"From other North Western Health Board documents it was clear that from the late nineties, the Castle was also intended to serve as a residential service for twelve-to-eighteen-year-olds. There were records of expenses for birthday presents, video rentals, emergency clothing and school uniforms. The records referred to structural problems with the building, damp and fire-safety concerns.

"In 2003, a report noted a ‘major roof problem’, requiring up to €10,000 to repair. The service had diminished, and there were plans to relocate it, ‘funded hopefully by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency with a voluntary organisation like St Mura’s Adoption Society and Cura adopting the project with the board as partner’.

"Two years later, in 2005, an inspection found the roof still unfixed, with a hole now allowing water into a bedroom at the back. One of the stairways was in a dangerous condition. The building needed to be assessed ‘to confirm it is fit for human habitation’.

"As was the case with Tuam in 1961, the eventual closure came on the heels of the local authority debating whether to invest to make the institution safe. Despite these problems, there were ‘four girls’ admitted in 2005. In 2006, the Castle’s final year in operation, there was a single admission.”

I’m a viewer…get me out of here!

The headline read: “Vogue Williams’ tear-jerking reunion with her kids has fans sobbing.”

My reaction was simple and brutal: “Who gives a flying duck?”, or words to that effect. No doubt the reference was in relation to the dreadful I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! So what constitutes ‘celebrity’?

I know very little about Vague…sorry Vogue… Williams bar an advertisement for washing up liquid! Also, typical tabloid bullshit…who says fans were sobbing and who saw the tears jerk? God give me strength.

It would make you yearn for the old Wright’s coal tar soap. The whole thing is a load of carbolics!Also, whatever about the Sun devoting a front page and two inside to the death of Twink’s parrot, even the Indo had half a page! Once upon a time in this business, the summer months were known as ‘the silly season’...it’s day and daily now. Bring back The Riordans. Ah, get up the yard, Benjy!