""EDUCATION Minister Caitriona Ruane has revealed she intends to scrap a law giving Northern Ireland children priority over those from the Republic when enrolling in Northern Ireland's schools.
Ms Ruane has advised school principals by letter and on the Department of Education website, that the legislation may be in breach of EU equality rules and parents' right to choice."
"It would be my intention to review the current legislation, with a view to changing it," she said.
"In doing so it is also my intention to work closely with my counterpart in the South.""
Ms Ruane’s sole motivations* here are to avoid breaching those (always handy) "EU equality rules" and ensuring parents have that elusive "right to choice"; there wouldn’t be any base political reasons behind her move here, oh no, of course not.
No mention of which EU "equality rules" are being breached needless to say,no mention of approaching the European Union first to actually clarify if there "may" have been a “breach” which you would have thought should have been her first logical step before upsetting parents and teachers on both sides of the border. No, the Secretary of the Colombian Bird-Watchers Society is straight in there, unilaterlally changing laws and liasing with her "counterpart in the South".
When she finally does get round to telling us which “equality” rules she’s referring to, I think she’ll probably quote the EU Race Equality Directive of 2000 (pdf)- at least I can find no other regulations which would come anywhere near addressing this issue.
This does indeed ban discrimination in the area of education on the grounds of ethnicity and race. But I'd make a guess that kids on both sides of the border are of Irish ethnicity and "race"(whatever that may mean), so any preference given to local kids over those from coming outside the area (never mind from outside the country) for their local school is not based on race or ethnic discrimination, but merely location. And all over the European Union, location is now used as the main determinant for deciding which schools kids may attend.
If that directive is the basic premise on which she is basing her opinion on, then she’s quite clearly wrong and this is the grounds that Wilson and others should be challenging her ruling.
* It should also be pointed out that, despite living in County Louth in the Republic, Ms Ruane’s own children attend schools in Northern Ireland, personal "conflict of interest" there?
4 comments:
Surely one has to look after ones own before looking after others. I see no reason why NI kids should not get preference over ROI kids in NI schools.
This is a fucking disgrace, the whole sorry shower of bastards up on the hill need booted out on their arses.
Nice language there beano I would like to point something out here a lot of the kids from the so called south who do go to schools in the north are believe it or not Protestants from places like North Monaghan East Donegal.I mean you abandoned their granfathers and grandmothers now you telling them they cant go to school there For Shame
Anonymous,
I think Beano was quite diplomatic in his description of our esteemed leaders up there in Stormont.
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