Sir, - The Education (Welfare) Bill, 1999, now nearing completion of its passage through the Oireachtas, proposes to introduce for the first time in the Republic a legal provision empowering the courts to imprison a parent for one month for failing to send their children to school on a first offence (Section 26.4) and to imprison a parent for a month for every day missed on subsequent convictions (Section 26.5). At a seminar on the Bill held in Clontarf last year, the Department of Education official defended these proposals publicly by saying it was not intended that they would be used. If it is not intended that they be used, surely they should not be enacted.
I do not believe that the introduction of this measure will help improve children's attendance at school. Parents fail to ensure their children's attendance at school because they or their children have problems. They need help and support with those problems. Many of the parents who fail to ensure their children's attendance at school are mothers with young children, often struggling to bring them up without the support of the father in the home, under stress and in poverty. Many are suffering from "nerves", depression or drug problems. To give the courts the power to put parents like these in prison because their children have missed school is excessive and counter-productive. The word "draconian" comes to mind.
Practically, who is to mind the children if the mother is put in prison? Will they be taken into care by the health authorities for the duration of the sentence? The Bill does not make clear provisions for the practicalities that would occur if this were going to happen. In Britain, problems have arisen where mothers are sent to prison unexpectedly and no arrangements have been made to mind the children. If the Bill is to go down this road, at the very least it should have provisions written into the legislation requiring that the arrangements for the care of the children are made before the sentence is passed.
It is my considered opinion, as someone who has been a school attendance officer for the past 25 years, that this proposal is inappropriate; that it will damage the relationship between school attendance officers/educational welfare officers and parents; that it will put at risk the lives of mothers under stress from suicide or suicide attempts while in prison; and that in the degree of disruption to family life involved, it is excessive to the point of probable unconstitutionality.
These provisions should be deleted from the Bill. - Yours, etc.,
Joseph McCarroll, Ph.D., School Attendance Officer, Willowfield Avenue, Goatstown, Dublin 14.