Door-to-door collections to fund childrens education?

national | education | other press Sunday March 01, 2009 13:34 by Sharon. - Individual .

Fine Gael rep 'flying a kite' or simply out of touch?

A Fine Gael Councillor and State Senator has suggested that a "national collection" should be done in order to fund the education of children with general learning disabilities.

Door-to-door collections to fund childrens education?

In its issue dated 25th February 2009 , 'The Clondalkin Echo' newspaper carried an article , on Page 1 and Page 3 , containing an interview with the Fine Gael Clondalkin Councillor and State Senator Therese Ridge .
In the interview , Therese Ridge suggested that 'a national collection to prevent services for children with learning disabilities being cut in our schools' would be a good idea . She queried whether , if the cutbacks regarding 'Special Teaching Posts' are not rescinded , a collection to fund same could be held : " Could there be some sort of national collection ? Surely we could do something about this ? I don't think anyone would mind giving to something like that."

It seems that these wealthy politicians have no idea what income tax , VAT , 'stealth' taxes and wage levies etc are stopped (at source) for - to fund , amongst other services , education.
At its weekly meeting (on Saturday 28 February 2009) the local Cumann of Republican Sinn Féin , the Carroll O' Donovan Cumann , condemned the idea as " not only unjust and unfair , but immoral as well " , and asked - "how long before we are asked to do door-to-door collections to fund street lighting etc as well ? The politicians have already introduced a double-tax on bin collections and now , apparently , wish to extend the unfair double-tax idea to other services , starting with childrens education . We will campaign as best we can against this 'fund-education-with-collections' notion and would urge other organisations to do the same."
More comment on this issue can be found at the 'Related Link' below .
Thanks!
Sharon.