Mayo community calls for rural resettlement to save schools

Rural resettlement calls by communities to save schools


Áine Ryan

AS a former teacher and resident of a rural community, Taoiseach Enda Kenny must stand up and say ‘no more rural schools should be shut’. That is the view of the founder of Rural Resettlement Ireland (RRI), Jim Connolly, who told The Mayo News yesterday that if he could speak to the Taoiseach directly he would say this policy is ‘one of the greatest scandals happening in rural Ireland today’.
Mr Connolly confirmed that members of a concerned community from the Erris region had recently contacted Rural Resettlement Ireland in a bid to attract young families to the area and thus stop the closure of primary schools.
He confirmed that ‘concerned parents from a particular school in north-west Mayo were massively worried about its possible closure or loss of a teacher’. Such worries are part of an increasing trend around rural Ireland, he said, where two or three extra pupils would save a rural school and sustain the demographic balance of a community.
Mr Connolly said: “We have been inundated with calls from rural communities who have the same concerns. The community owns these schools, many of which have been there since before the Great Famine. In recent weeks we have had requests from communities in Tipperary and Clare, as well as Mayo and there are three villages in west Clare who will welcome newly resettled families this summer and in each of these cases they are saving a teacher’s job.”
He strongly criticised the fact that the Government had totally cut his organisation’s funding two years ago.
“Our funding was cut at a time in our history with homelessness raging in the Dublin area while rural communities are collapsing due to emigration. We (RRI) are unique in Ireland for the way we try to redress on some levels this imbalance,” Mr Connolly said.   
Mr Connolly works on a voluntary basis and staff has now been cut back to one part-time member. Since its foundation 24 years ago, Rural Resettlement Ireland has helped to resettle over 700 families many of whom are now second generation members of rural communities.
“It is the norm that those families who integrate and stay often marry into the local communities and start new households. Indeed, they ultimately can be responsible for three or four new households in an area and a second-generation may be going to the same school that the parents helped to save,” Mr Connolly said.

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