FF Hypocrisy on Rural Schools

Labour TD for Cork South-West Michael McCarthy has said Fianna Fáil’s holier-than-thou approach to the small schools issue is a brazen attempt to re-write history.

“FF have no credibility on this issue. Their suddenly sanctimonious position on it is staggering given the fact that they ceded our economic sovereignty and put our State into receivership, consigning Ireland to beggar-my-neighbour status for years to come.

Their current position on small schools is a direct contradiction to their own pathetic performance in Government and ignores the fact that it was their own Education Minister, Mary Coughlan, who initiated a value for money review on small primary schools in the first place. No amount of haranguing in the Dáil or windy rhetoric will change this.

I have no doubt that people will see this for what it is - a brazenly hypocritical move by a party desperately scurrying for purpose and the populist view.

Fianna Fáil’s amnesic approach to this issue is an affront to democracy as it represents cheap, unconstructive politics at a time when open, honest dialogue is needed now more than ever.”