School in funding crisis should not have written to parents', says Taoiseach

Principal Orla McLoughlin said the school had “suffered massive underfunding for many years” due to cuts from the Department of Education.

The department has since committed to an early payment of a capitation grant which was due in June.

However, during Tuesday's leaders' questions, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said the funding crisis at the school had not been resolved.

He said the school first flagged a shortfall of €26,000 last October, but the crisis worsened.

"The school has been in touch with the department repeatedly, but no extra funding has been forthcoming," Mr Murphy said, saying the issue had been "kicked down the road".

"Sacred Heart Junior National School is just the canary in the coalmine. The senior school at Sacred Heart faces a funding crisis come September. Last Friday, I was contacted by the principal of another school, Holy Spirit Junior Primary School in Greenhills. Listen to what she has to say:

'The fact of the matter is we have approximately €8,000 in the bank. From this €8,000 we are expected to pay €10,000 worth of utility bills, pay a caretaker, bus escort and cleaner wages, buy resources for students, employ a plumber for a terrible smell on a corridor, not to mention all the other general maintenance costs, including the upkeep of our school building and grounds.'"

The school says without adequate financial support from the department, they are facing "the very real possibility of having to close our doors".

In response, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the school should not have written to parents.

"I do not believe there was a necessity to write that letter to the parents at that time, to be frank about it," he said.

However, Mr Murphy said the school had been told by the Department of Education to "engage with the community" in a bid to plug the funding gap. Mr Murphy said the Taoiseach's response was "victim-blaming" and "gaslighting".

Paediatric hip dysplasia surgeries

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald raised an audit of paediatric hip dysplasia surgeries at three Children's Health Ireland hospitals. The audit found hundreds of children who were operated on between 2021 and 2023 did not meet the threshold for this surgery and recommends 561 children be recalled and independently assessed.

"This is very serious," Ms McDonald said.

"Parents are at their wits' end... these parents were provided with an email address in the letter but many are telling us that they are emailing and getting no response. They are also ringing but getting no answer. It is heaping stress on top of stress. 

"One mother contacted us to say that she had received two letters because her twin daughters were three years of age when they had the surgery in 2023. She said it took them months to recover, to learn to walk again, not to mention the agonising pain each of them were in and the sleepless nights crying in pain. We want to get to the bottom of how they could put vulnerable children through this"."

In response, the Taoiseach said concerns were initially raised internally in CHI under protected disclosure arrangements in September 2023, but the Department of Health was notified about the matter on May 9 2024. Ms McDonald questioned when former health minister Stephen Donnelly knew of the issue, but Mr Martin said he was unable to answer.

"Once the audit is done, there has to be full transparency in respect of not just the audit but all aspects of how the case or this issue will be dealt with from here onwards. It is very worrying that an audit has been found necessary in the context of standards of clinical care," Mr Martin said.