Parents who let their children miss hundreds of schooldays spared jail

A COUPLE has been spared jail for failing to ensure their children went to school with one of them missing 145 days in one year.

Following a two-day hearing at Dublin District Court, Judge John O’Neill said the parents, who claimed their children were sick, had not been able to justify or produce evidence why their children aged from 11 to 15 years had missed school.

The eldest child missed 87% of days, 145 out of 167, and another boy was absent on 110 days from secondary school last year. Two of the younger children missed 55 and 52 days at primary school last year. Two headmasters gave evidence during the trial after a prosecution was brought by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency.

The father claimed the children had not gone to school because they suffered from asthma and a vomiting bug. The court heard that his benefits had been stopped and there was no heating in their rented house. The father said he could not make them go to school adding: ‘I can’t smack them, the law says I can’t do that.’

The mother said that one of the children suffered from depression and has gone to the doctor but she claimed it could take up to a year before he gets the treatment.

She said the children missed school for a variety of reasons: ‘mitching’, financial problems, they didn’t like getting up on cold mornings and they suffered from asthma. She claimed she tried to make them go and stopped letting them use the internet or phones and had fought with them about their playing truant. It was put to her that one of the headmasters gave evidence of having received just one medical cert. She claimed doctor’s notes were sent into school when her children were sick but admitted she did not have any copies of them. She accepted that the school had helped out with books and uniforms and meal vouchers.

Judge O’Neill said the fact that it was cold in the morning was no excuse and there was not a shred of medical evidence that the children were asthmatic. He said the defendants’ attitude ‘does not bode well for the children’s future’.

He convicted the mother and father of breaching the Education and Welfare Act, and he fined them €400 each.

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