Gaelscoil Cholmcille

Donations to Bertie/Cabhraigh le Bertie
Just when the Government thought it was safe – as the dust settles on the deserted site off Oscar Traynor Road (designated for the scoil nua), the intrepid parents, friends and families of Gaelscoil Cholmcille are active again. For one exciting hour last week the desolate site in Santry came to life and was as it should be! The chatter of children was heard, as was ceoil, a badhrán, songs and laughter. The school bell rang and children took their seats on the grass, under the sky, inside the walls of the cardboard school which they had built themselves, for the first hedge school/scoil chois claí of modern times in Ireland. This time on Thursday May 27th at 1pm the parents, children, friends and families of Gaelscoil Cholmcille invite you to join them once again on their “Buy the Site Day of Action II – the Sequel” at the stately gates of Dáil Éireann. Pupils, families and friends will gather at the Dáil Gates on Thursday next, buckets in hand asking the public to make a donation to Bertie/Cabhraigh le Bertie, to help him to buy the site at Oscar Traynor Road and to build our school. The money collected will be offered to Bertie as a ‘nest egg’ towards the purchase of the site and the building of the school. The site has been available for two years while the government has stood idly by. Meanwhile, frustration and anger regarding the unsafe and cramped conditions in the present school has grown. The school continues to operate from a football club in totally unacceptable conditions. Money that could be used to purchase a site and build the school continues to be wasted on rent. The Department of Education and Minister Dempsey must mend Minister Woods’ broken promise. Parents have had enough. Neither financial nor other excuses will be tolerated any longer. Cakes/buns will be offered at the Dáil Gates to those who make a donation along with ceoil agus craic from the talented bunch of páistí. Tar linn! Don’t throw in the towel, throw in a coin instead and bring that site off Oscar Traynor Road back to life once again!

A Site to behold on May 19th!
Cardboard School to be built in North Dublin
The parents, families and children of Gaelscoil Cholmcille invite you to join us on our ‘Buy the Site Day of Action’ at 9am on Wednesday, May 19th 2004. In this novel and dramatic demonstration pupils, families and friends will build a school of cardboard boxes on the proposed site of the new school beside the Astro Park, off Oscar Traynor Rd in Santry. This will take place in an attempt to portray the impoverished conditions in which the school currently operates and to highlight the urgent need for a new site for Gaelscoil Cholmcille (currently operating out of a football clubhouse). When the shanty school is built the children will take their places for a hedge school/scoil chois claí to highlight how their treatment by the Department of Education is comparable to how children were treated in Ireland three hundred years ago. The event will also highlight the many broken promises that have paved the road to the school in the past eight years when no less than five excellent sites which were identified by school authorities were let slip by the Department of Education. After this event, we invite members of the media to return with us to the current temporary accommodation of Gaelscoil Cholmcille at Larkhill Road. (opposite DCU) to see for yourselves how unsuitable, unsafe and delapidated our current conditions are. We will be joined there by a number of politicians and public figures who support our campaign.