This letter has been sent to my local representatives, to the Minister for Education and Skills, to the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.
I am writing to you to protest at the potential loss of an absolutely vital programme for young people, not through cuts but through simple inaction.
The Junior Cert Support Programme is one of those rare projects that has been properly planned, properly implemented and properly monitored, and it has been famously successful in saving thousands of youngsters from early school-leaving and the appalling cultural and economic consequences.
As an author and illustrator, I have visited, and worked, in hundreds of schools and libraries across the country. I have seen firsthand the benefit of having a JCSP library in a school – and the queues of young people waiting to get into them when they open each day. Imagine that – teenagers queuing to get into a library. This is a brilliant programme, one that has helped to make up for Ireland’s woeful cobbled-together system of school libraries. They are a model for a programme that should be rolled out to every secondary school in the country.
A full-time librarian is key to these projects – and I have found every one of them to be competent, enthusiastic and committed individuals. The libraries cannot operate properly without them. They need to be recognized as the front-line staff that they are.
Now, because of a bureaucratic fumble, most of these librarians are facing the completion of their contracts at the end of August. Because of the public services recruitment embargo, their contracts may not be renewed. Without these people, the libraries will be slowly gutted and die a slow death as their resources are absorbed into the normal school system.
The Junior Cert Support Programme is something this government got absolutely right. How many other projects can claim the same? To build a smart economy, we’re going to need a high quality education system. This is no time to be sacking librarians, or closing libraries. Our young people need all the help they can get. Let’s give them everything we can.
Regards,
Oisín McGann.
