Co. Galway farmer fronts campaign to retain second teacher
Paddy Curran, a dry cattle and sheep farmer, lives across from the school, Scoil Naomh Pádraig, An Chloch Bhreac, and is also part of the parents' committee.
The school is set to lose three of its seven pupils next September, which would result in the loss of its second teacher.
The parents' committee is offering a €2,000 bursary to be paid in two instalments over two school years to the families of seven new pupils who enrol in the school from outside the area, in an attempt to prevent that loss.
Five families have already committed to having their children educated through Irish at the school, which is located between loughs Corrib and Masc in north Connemara, approximately six miles from the village of Cong. Two more pupils are required.
The school now provides after-school services and plans to introduce a breakfast club from September.
Curran – a past pupil of the school – said that not that many children were born in the area in the last four to five years.
He said: 'Once you go below 11 pupils, the second teacher is taken.'
The irony, he remarked, is that there are about 14 babies and toddlers in the locality who will start in the school in the next few years.
'One of the best things about the school is its low numbers. Historically the school has had between 30 and 40 pupils.'
Overall, the reaction to the bursary, which came about through fundraising by the parents' committee and money from the school, was very encouraging, Curran said.
'The response has been very good. We will probably run the bursary for a few years,' he added.
The Co. Galway farmer said that there is plenty of work in the area, with a lot of people living locally commuting to work in Galway, Castlebar, and Westport.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
A gay man's road to parenthood: 'Three adoption agencies turned me down flat'
Vincent Ryan always knew he wanted to be a father... and today the Manchester-based Co Kilkenny native is a proud dad to two boys, Alfie, seven, and Theodore, three. 'The three of us are a little tribe and it just works,' he says. Ryan's route to parenthood hasn't been conventional or easy. Both boys are adopted and Ryan, who is gay and single, had to contend with preconceptions and prejudice from the moment he sought to be considered as a parent. Three adoption agencies turned me down flat.' A fourth agreed to take him on, with the caveat that it would be 'a challenge'. Once the adoption agency had completed its rigorous assessment, a report was sent to an independent adoption panel, which further scrutinised Ryan. He not only had to contend with the intense (albeit necessary) interrogation that comes with the adoption process but felt he faced an unwarranted focus on his sexual orientation. 'The questions weren't so much based always around my capability [to be a parent] but around my sexuality,' he says. 'But I'm very determined, so I don't really believe in the word 'no'. I'll always fight the cause and find a way. And thankfully I managed to get through.' Managing to get through has been a leitmotif of Ryan's life. Growing up in a small Irish rural town through the 1980s and '90s, he knew he was 'different' but, in a time when gay visibility was practically non-existent, he found himself unable to 'put a label' on that difference. 'I didn't know anyone like me,' he says. 'Back then, [being gay] wasn't ever spoken about. There was no reference to it whatsoever.' Vincent Ryan with his kids Alfie and Theo Ryan 'struggled massively' at school and was bullied for being 'clearly different'. Things 'weren't great' at home, either, he says, and he 'didn't have the best relationship' with his own father. Towards the end of his time in secondary school, Ryan developed anorexia. 'I didn't finish school with any qualifications and I almost ran away.' He didn't, though; instead, serendipity intervened when he spotted an ad for cabin crew on Aertel, RTÉ's teletext service. 'I researched it and I thought, 'OK, I can fly and get away and escape.'' Ryan got the job and 'that was the start of finding out who I was; mixing with other people like me'. The support of his newfound friendships in Dublin gave him the courage to come out to his family at 19. 'None of them were surprised. None of them were shocked.' Sadly, however, some of his extended family 'disowned' him and remain estranged. Ryan loved his job but his goal had always been to work for Virgin Atlantic and, in 2002, he applied for a cabin crew position and was accepted. This precipitated a move to London aged 19 which, he says, was 'really tough because at that point I was still really insecure'. Ryan, now 43, still works for the company (although he no longer flies) and finds its inclusive work environment 'so accepting' and 'so lovely'. A 'horrible break-up' and his father's untimely death at 52 prompted a move to Manchester in 2013. His goal of being happily settled 'just never happened — and it's still not happened for me'. In 2015, Ryan read a magazine article about LGBT+ adoption. The piece was 'couple-based' but it got him wondering if he could adopt solo — something he'd never realised could be an option — and he set about looking for an agency to take him on. Vincent Ryan and his two children, out and about RESILIENCE The resilience he had acquired from past adversities stood to him throughout the challenging process of becoming approved as an adoptive parent. 'There were lots of tears and many times I rang my mom to say, 'I just can't do this.' But there's always been a determination in me since I was young from being bullied and the anorexia. I'd sit and think, 'Do you know what? I didn't give up then, and I'm not going to give up now. There will be a way through.'' And there was. In August 2017, Ryan was signed off as a concurrent carer and an approved adopter. The former comes with in-built uncertainty and extreme emotional challenges. 'The child has contact with their birth family once or twice a week in a contact centre [while] you're doing everything a parent does,' Ryan explains. 'But you can never refer to yourself as 'dad'. You're not dad until the courts rule that they stay with you for adoption but, in the back of your mind, there's always that thought that you could get a phone call one day… and then you literally get a limited amount of time to pack up, get everything ready, and hand them back.' Despite his mother's urging to choose the straightforward adoption route, Ryan was adamant being a concurrent carer was the right path for him. 'It was important for me to do it that way. I think maybe [because of] what I'd gone through growing up.' Twice, Ryan had his nursery ready only to be told they had 'found other carers'. Then, that October, he got a call to say: 'We've got this little boy, he's a perfect match but we need to move quickly.' Twenty-four hours later, 10-week-old Alfie arrived 'and he's been with me since'. He took a year's adoption leave. 'For the first couple of months, we shut ourselves away and just got to know each other and got settled into a routine.' His employer was incredibly supportive and worked with him to rewrite its adoption leave policy to make it more LGBT+ friendly so that 'anyone coming behind me would have the same [support] I had'. Almost two years passed before Alfie's adoption was finalised. Ryan recalls the emotion of the day he'd longed for but knew might never come, when he was finally able to tell his toddler son he was his dad. I walked in the door and Alfie ran down the hallway and I said, 'I'm Daddy now.' That word 'dad', after two years, was incredible. When Alfie was three, Ryan felt he should have a sibling who was also adopted — 'so they'd always have that common bond and that understanding of each other' — and began the process again. When he arrived, four-day-old Theo was so tiny that Ryan 'could literally hold him in one hand'. Ryan and Theo's birth mother built up an incredible relationship on Theo's twice-weekly visits and, when his adoption was signed off, she sent a letter. '[It] said, 'I know I can't look after him but he's with you and he's with the right person.' It was humbling. It was beautiful.' Theo was not meeting his milestones, and tests found he has Noonan syndrome, a rare genetic condition that comes with multiple health challenges, including growth restriction, cardiac issues, and hearing difficulties. It's a lot but Ryan says 'we cope incredibly well' and that Theo, whom he officially adopted in July 2024, is ' a little warrior'. Alfie and Theo are deeply bonded and 'have this incredible relationship'. Vincent Ryan and kids: 'It's the most rewarding thing you could ever do'. He set up the Instagram account @dadonthego_ as a 'diary for the boys' but it has also become a way to spread awareness of Noonan syndrome and of LGBT+ adoption. 'If you have the home and the space and the love and the time, then look into it and invest into it because it's the most rewarding thing you could ever do,' he shares. He admits that he faces a lot of trolling which is 'hurtful to read,' but says, 'I've always been driven on by bullies. It just lights something in me where I go, 'Do you know what? I'm not having that.' It gets exhausting but I do drive on to try to make that change.' And he is making change. He believes in 'give and take'. 'It's got to be acceptance and education on both sides. Otherwise, ignorance just breeds ignorance. And where does it end?' He now sits as a chair on an independent adoption panel with members who had previously interviewed him. Through his openness and honesty, he was able to raise awareness of what he felt were discriminatory lines of questioning and have them removed from being asked at future panels. 'To be able to play a part in changing that dynamic and how we look at LGBT+ adoption and filter questions that are not needed… it was an incredible turnaround to make sure nobody else has to go through what I went through when it comes to wanting to be a parent.' The boys adore visiting their Irish nana, and it's a full-circle moment for Ryan. 'When I think about younger Vince who was so sad, so depressed, anorexic, really lonely, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that years down the line my sons would be playing in the garden I played in. I'm a massive believer in everything leads you to where you're meant to be. What I went through built my resilience to have the boys. I don't regret any of it; it happened and it's made me who I am today.'
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Michelle Darmody: My fool-proof rainbow cake recipe for your Cork Pride celebrations
This is not a cake I would ordinarily bake, I find the amount of colour and faff off-putting. I am making an exception today to celebrate Pride. One of my old friends, Tonie Walsh was involved in the first Pride Parade in Ireland in 1983. It took courage and defiance to walk the streets of our capital at a time when being in a relationship with someone you love was illegal and posed a danger to your safety. We have not ironed out all of the negative attitudes in Irish society, I loathe to paint us as perfect, but we have come a long way. I have participated in many Pride parades over the past decades and seen first-hand the overwhelming support and joy that is spread on that day. In recent years, it has become less of a community event and grown bigger than Tonie, or any of his friends, could have imagined back on that afternoon in 1983, but perhaps this is a good thing. The wide reach, the big companies coming on board; let's take the positive from this and celebrate and embrace the energy, creativity and fun that opening up to inclusivity and diversity brings to a society. So, for today, I will tip a little extra bit of rainbow colouring into my sponge, and smile to myself at an Ireland I am happier to be a part of. Rainbow Cake recipe by:Michelle Darmody For today, I will tip a little extra bit of rainbow colouring into my sponge and smile to myself at an Ireland I am happier to be a part of. Servings 16 Preparation Time 60 mins Cooking Time 25 mins Total Time 1 hours 25 mins Course Dessert Ingredients for the cake: 420g butter, soft 420g caster sugar 8 eggs, lightly beaten 2 tsp vanilla 420g self raising flour for the icing: 420g butter, soft 840g icing sugar 2 tsp vanilla a dash of milk Method Preheat your oven to 160°C/gas mark 3 and line five 8-inch round spring form tins with parchment. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla to your eggs. Turn your mixer down low or use a wooden spoon to add half of the eggs into the butter and sugar. Add a tablespoon of the flour and then add the rest of the eggs. Add in the rest of the flour until combined. Scoop the mixture into five bowls and add a drop of different colour food colouring to each bowl and combine. Scoop each of the mixtures into the five prepared tins. Bake the cake for 25 minutes until baked through. Allow to cool in the tins until cool enough to handle then place onto wire racks to cool completely. To make the icing, whisk the icing ingredients until light and fluffy. Once the cakes have completely cooled, trim them and sandwich them together with the buttercream, one on top of the other, in a neat pile. Add a thin layer of icing to the outside of the cake and let it cool. Cover the outside of the cake in icing and smooth it out. Baker's tips: For the smoothest batter it is best to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. For the five 8-inch round tins use either spring form or loose base tins. It is unlikely that you can fit five tins comfortably in your oven so the cakes can be baked in batches. Keep the tin in the fridge or a cool place while you are waiting to bake them. In this recipe, I bake at a lower temperature than I would normally choose, because the sponges are very thin, this helps to prevent them drying out. Gel food coloring is concentrated so it allows you to use less than liquid colours. Gel food coloring is also thicker so will not affect the consistency of the batter. You can easily buy natural food colourings. It is important to properly cool the cakes as it improves stability when stacking and is essential for adding the icing. To ensure flat layers trim or level them by using a serrated knife to trim off any domed tops. Assemble the layers carefully. When icing, apply a thin layer called a 'crumb coat' to seal in crumbs, then chill the cake, if possible, in the fridge, or else a cool place before applying the final icing. Using a cake scraper and turntable can help get smooth sides and clean edges. Placing the cake in the fridge to firm up helps to make it more secure and easier to move and slice. Three delicious variations: Lemon layer cake This can easily be transformed into a lemon layer cake, with or without the food colouring. Add a generous amount of lemon zest into the batter. I would suggest the zest of 6 lemons. For the icing, use a mixture of the zest of 2 oranges and 1 lemon, this gives a nice colour as well as flavour. Chocolate buttercream You can use a chocolate buttercream to coat the cake and between the layers in place of the vanilla 420g of soft butter, with 800g icing sugar, 40g of cocoa powder and a dash of milk. Whisk until completely light and fluffy. Coffee layer cake Coffee butter cream is delicious! You can also make a variation with a coffee buttercream used to sandwich the layers. Whisk 420g of soft butter, soft with 800g icing sugar, 2 very strong espressos, making up about 30mls of liquid. Whisk until completely light and fluffy. Read More Ireland's best food trucks and street food stalls to try this summer
Irish Post
9 hours ago
- Irish Post
Delivered by lamplight in old rural Donegal
IN the shadow of empire and economic hardship, one Irish childhood spans the transition from thatched cottages to postwar council flats—and all the ghosts in between. James Harvey's memoir Grappling With Ghosts captures the strangeness and struggle of a lost world. Below is an extract from the book... THE world on both sides of the Irish Sea is so utterly changed today from what it was when I entered it eight decades ago, that it's hard to recapture it now. But recreating the strange and remote realities of that world is what I set out to do in the memoir of my childhood, Grappling With Ghosts, published earlier this year. Ireland, just 30 years removed from 700 years of British domination, had scarcely emerged from the 19th century. It remained a 'priest-ridden, God-forsaken race,' in James Joyce's acerbic description. London, meanwhile, shrouded in fog and greasy coal soot was the epicentre of an exhausted debtor nation, still clinging to an image of British exceptionalism. A young Queen Elizabeth took the throne, Winston Churchill took his second bite at the prime ministerial apple, and the Empire circled the drain. As my mother's contractions began on the day she delivered me, back in the 1940s, the only way to get her to Donegal hospital about ten miles away was by horse and cart. There were few cars in Donegal at the time. There was no taxi stand to turn to. Even if there had been, there were no telephones. For that matter, there was no electricity. The horse-drawn cart was the only option, its boxy body without springs sitting on an unforgiving cast-iron axle and large 4-foot-high wooden wheels, shod in steel. They never made it to the hospital. As the horse plodded along on Donegal's rough roads, my mother realized they had better stop at her parents' thatched cottage. My grandmother got busy preparing to deliver the baby. In due course I arrived, and my grandmother made a startling discovery. 'There's another one in there,' she declared to my mother's shock. Before they knew it, my twin brother Frank, made his appearance. And the two of us became the fourth and fifth children in the family. Frank earned the only crib in the cottage. I was unceremoniously dumped in a kitchen drawer. James Harvey's mother pictured at the Neeld Arms in Paddington, London Pregnant women and their families at the time had so little agency that professionals didn't think they needed to know that twins were on the way. Meanwhile, London, to which we moved three years later, was still marked by the destruction of World War II. Everywhere you turned you found armless and legless men in wheelchairs or on crutches. There were bombed sites all over the city—buildings that had been flattened during World War II. One of them was located right beside our home in St. John's Wood. Another was across Cirencester Street from the primary school I later attended in Paddington. The overwhelming sense of London in the early 1950s was of a grim and dark environment. Thousands of chimneys belched black coal smoke that congealed greasily on everything it touched—and in every lung it entered. Bronchial catarrh was a sort of universal affliction among London adults. After men hopped off busses, many of them performed a routine pantomime of coughing, hawking, and spitting to get rid of the discharge. Life was tough for working people. Work was hard. Wages tight. Spousal abuse was taken for granted. Newsagents sold cigarettes in packs of five, and even one or two at a time. And toughs known as Teddy Boys dressed in Edwardian clothes and terrorized some streets. Teddy Boys in 1950s London But shafts of light penetrated this gloom. Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. A British expedition scaled Everest. And Roger Bannister, an Oxford medical student, broke the legendary four-minute mile barrier. Locally, pubs provided a break from the tedium. The Neeld Arms in Paddington, where my mother worked as a barmaid, served as a social centre for the Irish community in and around Harrow Road. Life was a challenging struggle for the working-class Irish, whether farming in Donegal or living as labourers or domestics in London. But the bleakness and financial stress of those days could be relieved by the love and affection of close-knit families. The book is available now James Harvey's memoir, Grappling With Ghosts: Childhood Memories from Postwar Ireland and London, 2025 is available now. See More: Grappling With Ghoses, James Harvey, Memoir
