Cherishing all the children of the nation equally

One of the great founding myths of this country is the call in the 1916 Proclamation that was echoed in the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil ‘to treat all the children of the nation equally’. It is not special. It has been the aspiration of every democratic republic from Plato through Cicero Tom Paine, our own Wolfe Tone, Davitt and Connolly that in a republic everyone should have equal opportunity. The children of the republic are all its citizens.


I am conscious of this every year when the Leaving Cert results are announced because it is a graphic example of how the national cake is shared out not just in financial terms but in terms of who will benefit from the organisation and structure of society. It will become clear next week when the CAO results are announced that a disproportionate amount of the best third level places will go to a significant but relatively small proportion of the population and thus the ability to maintain your place or advance your place in society.

However this week there were other markers for the kind of society we have become. The much leaked Hunt report on higher education funding has received another airing, softening us up for the re-introduction of third level fees. It seems that if we mention the lack of funding for third level education enough then the only solution will be the re-introduction of fees. Since they were abolished by Niamh Breathnach there has been a constant lobby for their re-introduction. Few are arguing that education is a right not a privilege and if people benefit from it lets tax them appropriately and give that money to third level. This argument gets little traction because those who benefit disproportionately from their third level education would proportionately pay more tax and they and their spokespeople are not having that.

Which brings me to my third point of the week. It think it was Joe Lee who said that the ruling generations of the twenties, thirties, forties and fifties were willing to see whole swathes of Irish people emigrate so that they could maintain their lifestyle and so we see it again. Morning Ireland ran a series on where emigrants might find work instead of railing against the injustice of emigration. On Liveline Joe Duffy’s listeners catalogued a whole series of petty regulation about signage which was effecting small businesses trying to keep people in employment. But then none of the enforcers will be emigrating.

Lastly we heard how in the 60’s the state and religious orders allowed innocent children in orphanages to be used as guineas pigs in vaccine tests. It probably didn’t matter since they were exported through adoption or would inevitably emigrate so they would become someone else’s problem.

I have a good idea now what the inheritors of independent Ireland meant when they shouted ‘Up the republic’ and it was not a cry to treat all the children of the nation equally. But let us now in this time of economic crisis reclaim those republican ideals. Encourage our young people to stay and give them the best education money can buy and say to those who have benefited disproportionately from our economy ‘It is a republic, we all are equal and if you don’t like it maybe you should be the ones to emigrate’