The Minister for Education has confirmed that there is no Department requirement for students to own a laptop and that schools should ensure no child is disadvantaged due to lack of access to technology. However, many families are being asked to spend hundreds of euro on specific devices, sometimes through single-supplier arrangements and third party financial institutions. The Department has also acknowledged concerns about the financial burden these schemes can place on families. As digital technology becomes increasingly important in education, national protections are needed to ensure affordability, choice and equal access for all students.

Calling all friends and families of Scoil Chualann, please sign the petition to request an appeal to Department of Education decision to reduce the number of permanent full time teachers in Scoil Chualann for Academic Year 2026- 2027. Scoil Chualann has been at the heart of education in Bray for generations building a proud tradition of academic excellence and cultural excellence. Scoil Chualann is a co-educational, all-Irish primary school (Gaelscoil) situated on Vevay Road in Bray, County Wicklow. Established in 1977 it is dedicated to providing Irish-medium education while nurturing Irish culture and heritage. A major milestone in its history occurred in the 1980s when a dedicated, permanent 8 classroom purpose built facility was opened to it's pupils.  For the academic year 2026 & 2027, parents have been informed following the release of Dept of Education Circular 0025/2026 there will multi grade class for Rang 3 & Rang 4 with proposed class size of 36 pupils. This proposal has naturally raised many concerns for parents of children currently enrolled, which we outlined below: 1.  A multi grade class of 36 children is 57% higher ratio than the recommended national ratio of 23 : 1 pupils to teacher ratio for primary school.  2. This local issue also highlights a national issue. According to the Department of Education, more than 43,000 Irish primary school pupils were in classes of 30 or more last year, while the average primary school class size remains at 22.5 pupils, which so happens to be the highest in the EU. Despite repeated commitments to reduce class sizes, many schools continue to operate overcrowded classrooms that place enormous pressure on children, teachers, and parents.  3. Gaelscoileanna operate through full immersion in Irish. Pupils are taught through Irish across all subjects, often with varying levels of fluency. Learning through Irish requires: additional classroom interaction,  engagement and reinforcement to ensure children can fully access the curriculum confidently through the Irish language. Introducing new concepts, encouraging participation through Irish, supporting language development maintaining immersive classroom environments 4. Protect the long-term sustainability, accessibility and growth of Irish-medium education across Ireland and align staffing policy with the State’s commitments to strengthening the Irish language. (Action Plan for 2026-2028 launched in support of the National Plan for Irish Language Public Services 2024-2030) 5. It is about recognising that equal numerical formulas do not always create equal educational outcomes. If Ireland truly values the Irish language, then our schools must be properly supported to deliver it. 6. If the Department of Education genuinely wants to support and grow the Irish language, then our education system must actively support the schools and communities doing that work every day.Children learning through Irish should be encouraged and properly supported, not expected to succeed within increasingly stretched classroom environments that fail to recognise the additional educational demands involved.

On 19th May, the staff and students of St. Patrick’s College in Carlow, along with the wider community, were devastated to hear of the planned closure of Carlow College. While the merger with SETU had been known about for years, the plans presented had been that Patrick’s would continue as a Humanities campus, and staff would be retained or transferred. What transpired was a hard pivot from this, SETU was gifted a prime property location estimated at around 20 million Euros and little to nothing was given in return. Staff have been given little consideration in this process. There has been no consultation as to what should happen with the grounds of Carlow College, the heart of Carlow town and its cultural life for 250 years. This petition is a call to action which hopes to galvanise both the college and the wider Carlow community in drawing attention to and getting answers to the following issues: 1.      The unfavourable terms staff were terminated with; promises were made that Patrick’s would continue as a going concern under SETU  2.      The loss of a Humanities college in the Southeast with no consultation 3.      The hard and unexplained pivot from the plan of Patrick’s continuing as a Humanities campus under SETU to its closure and the lack of transparency around it 4.      Ensure that there is public consultation over the future use of the grounds of St. Patrick’s. Contact: [email protected] Please visit https://www.youtube.com/@carlowcollegeclosure for updates.

Gorey Hill School was officially opened at the beginning of 2025 in the same grounds as Gaelscoil Moshíológ. This was supposed to be a temporary location until a new purpose built school is built on a green field site. The department has now decided the current shared site to be the permanent home of Gorey Hill and plans to build modular buildings and car parks covering the majority of Gaelscoil’s green space. This is in direct contradiction to the department’s National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development which supports schools in creating sustainable learning environments and developing “healthy ecosystems, biodiversity and conservation - essential for humanity’s continued security”. Our objection is based on: 1. Massive impact of loss of greenspace to our students, especially those with special needs. 2. Firm belief that Gorey Hill deserves the green field, purpose build school they were promised. 3. Likely loss of Naíonra, breakfast and afterschool service which are now essential to the growth of the school and the families who utilise the service each day. 4. Unsustainable overcrowding of the of the area, putting pressure on utilities and causing health and safety issues regarding access and evacuation routes. We wish to make it very clear that we are not opposed to Gorey Hill School or to the children and families who attend it. We fully recognise the importance of appropriate long-term provision for children with additional needs, and we acknowledge the dedication of their families. It is also important to note that the Gaelscoil itself supports children with additional needs, and this must be properly considered in all planning decisions. However, we do not believe the current proposal represents a sustainable or workable solution for either school.  It appears the Department is forcing two minority educational experiences to squeeze onto a single site, which if it goes ahead, will become very built up. Both schools will lack green space and the opportunity to grow and expand.

Because every child deserves Magic at Christmas, even children who are employed in slave labour in the cocoa industry who supply Cadbury's. " Mondelēz International — the food giant behind Oreos, Cadbury, and Toblerone — has spent years cultivating an image as a sustainability leader, earning high environmental scores and pledging to eliminate deforestation and human rights abuses from its supply chains. Investigative reporting, however, reveals a starkly different reality: of a company that appears more focused on protecting its reputation than preventing harm to vulnerable people and the planet. For decades, Mondelēz has faced scrutiny over its cocoa sourcing in West Africa, where child and forced labor are widely documented and an estimated 1.56 million children work on cocoa farms. In 2022, a Channel 4 investigation reported that children as young as ten were using machetes to harvest cocoa pods on a Ghanaian farm allegedly linked to Mondelēz. Mondelēz has emphasized that such practices violate its policies and has pointed to its child labor monitoring system. But that system does not cover all the farms in its supply chain, and the company lacks full traceability for its cocoa — meaning it cannot determine whether child labor is involved in some of the cocoa it uses." Source: https://www.ran.org/the-understory/mondelez-has-built-a-reputation-on-sustainability-we-call-it-deception/

St. Patrick's Day is Ireland's most important national and cultural celebration, recognised globally.  Establishing a fixed annual long weekend would: • Enable greater participation in parades, cultural events and community celebrations • Support tourism, hospitality, and local economies across the country • Provide a consistent national holiday structure This change would preserve the cultural, historical and religious significance of the 17th of March while improving how the public holiday is observed for the benefit of society and the economy.

Around 30,000 children have been killed in Gaza, along with thousands of teachers. Yet Allianz insures the munitions used by the Israeli military and has invested over €7 billion in Israeli government bonds, helping fund the ongoing assault. Parents should not have to worry that money paid to protect our children with the Pupil Personal Insurance  could contribute to the killing of other children. We cannot support a corporation like Allianz with so much blood on its hands. 

Yesterday the world, and our community, celebrated World Book Day. Our children dressed up as their favourite characters. We celebrated the important role of reading in development, in mental health, and in how we understand the world. Yet in Donabate, a rapidly expanding community, we have recently been severely downgraded in our library services. Our library was in the community centre. The library had something for everyone in the community: lots of colourful books for younger children, spaces for teenagers to study with friends or on their own, and a wide range of books for adults. In January the library was relocated to the old Credit Union building. The building itself is beautiful. But, unfortunately, the new library is 169 square metres — over 200 square metres smaller than the previous space. Now there is a lack of comfortable space for children to relax and read - the toys and art supplies have been removed. Secondary school students have also lost the space they used for studying, and adults of all reading tastes have seen a drastic decrease in selection. There was a general feeling in Donabate, with its rapidly expanding population, that the new library was to be an upgrade. However, there are now serious concerns that the community is losing significant library space in the short term, and it is completely unclear when the library will return to a size comparable to what it originally was — let alone when it will be appropriate for Donabate’s significantly increasing population. We understand that the new building is only Phase One, and that there is a planned Phase Two expansion to enlarge and enhance the library in the future. While we welcome any long‑term investment, planning & construction timelines for Phase Two are unclear.  There is serious concern it will take years to deliver. Our community — especially our children, young and old — needs a functioning, accessible, and appropriately sized library now, not at some distant point in the future. We are calling for Phase Two to be prioritised and accelerated, with interim solutions put in place immediately.

1. Throwing books in the bin is an attack on intellectual freedom Books are not disposable objects — they are voices, ideas, experiences, and history. When books are dumped in waste bins, the community’s right to knowledge and individuals’ right to think freely are discarded with them. This undermines the spirit of Article 40.6.1 of the Irish Constitution, which protects freedom of expression and the circulation of ideas. 2. What happened sets a dangerous precedent If hundreds of books can be labelled “extremist” and thrown away without any academic or legal assessment, then any institution could dispose of any book it dislikes. Today it is jurisprudence and history; tomorrow it could be philosophy, politics, or literature. 3. The library was a major cultural and educational asset This was not a small collection. It was a multilingual library containing: • 10,000 Arabic books • 4,000 English books • Additional collections in several other languages This is an irreplaceable intellectual heritage. Losing it is a loss for the entire society. 4. Protecting books means protecting cultural diversity Ireland prides itself on being an inclusive and multicultural society. Destroying an entire library sends the opposite message: exclusion instead of inclusion. 5. The incident damages the credibility of cultural and religious institutions Communities expect institutions to safeguard knowledge, not dispose of it in rubbish bins. Restoring trust requires transparency, responsibility, and respect for written heritage.

The environmental impact of using generative AI is incomprehensible to the general public. In 2025 alone, the data centers used to run OpenAI tools were responsible for 32.6 - 79.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. According to OpenAI engineers, clean drinking water must be used to cool the data servers in order to prevent "mineral build-up" in the cooling systems. Data centers are literally using one of humanity's most precious and scarce resources to cool their servers, and it is dwindling by the day. OpenAI's projected water usage could hit 6.6 billion m³ by 2027, which is equivalent to 13.2 billion 500ml water bottles. Although this issue seems out of our hands, students can do their part by helping ban ChatGPT from the Trinity College Dublin Wi-Fi. ChatGPT is the most widely-used generative AI model, thus, blocking access would drastically reduce students' contribution to this ever growing problem. You can help do your part by signing our petition!

For years, our school community has been waiting for progress on an approved new school building. In the meantime, hundreds of children continue to learn in an ageing main building that no longer meets the needs of a modern primary school. Several classes are housed in portacabins due to overcrowding. Recent severe weather has exposed just how serious this situation has become. • One portacabin classroom suffered a floor collapse. • Two additional classrooms and the reception office are dealing with active leaks. While school staff handle these situations with professionalism and calm, the reality is stark: young children are being educated in infrastructure that is visibly failing. This is no longer an inconvenience. It is an urgent issue affecting the safety, wellbeing, and educational experience of hundreds of local children. At the same time, Dunboyne is expanding rapidly. A major housing development is already underway, and an influx of young families is inevitable. It is deeply concerning that while residential construction accelerates, critical educational infrastructure remains stalled. Parents have shown patience and good faith for many years. But children only experience primary school once. They should not spend those formative years in deteriorating facilities while the wider area grows around them. We are calling on our local representatives and the Department of Education to: • Treat the new Dunboyne school building as a priority project • Provide a clear and binding timeline for commencement and completion • Confirm the current stage of the project and the immediate next steps Our children deserve safe, modern learning environments. Our growing community deserves infrastructure that matches its expansion. We are asking for action, clarity, and momentum — not further delay. Dunboyne Junior & Senior Primary Schools - Parent Association

Aughrim Street has high traffic levels during school hours. There are large groups of pupils crossing at the same times. A new bus route now passes along Aughrim Street, increasing traffic volume and making the crossing busier and more dangerous. The School Warden on Oxmantown Road needs their hours extended to cover the 1:30 p.m. collection, as many younger children finish at that time and require safe crossing support.