Linda Ervine is glad to see the back of 2024 – but is looking forward to 2025 when she hopes to make history when the first integrated Irish medium school opens its doors.
In just a few weeks the new nursery pupils of Scoil na Seolta will be at their desks and in September it will welcome the first class of Primary One pupils.
It’s been a long road for the Irish language campaigner, who has headed the team behind the new school since 2018, and last year was one of the most difficult periods in making the vision a reality.
On New Year’s Eve, Linda posted on social media that the past 12 months have been tough.
She wrote: “I’m glad to see the back of 2024 as it’s been a difficult one. I had to combine my job as manager of the Turas project with finishing the last semester of my degree in Irish and taking over management of our Naíscoil for a few months due to staff illness.
“During this time my son was extremely ill and there were many nights without sleep.“Added to this was a campaign of misinformation and accusations directed against my work, a fake letter, and a libellous article which is presently at the hands of my solicitor.
“All of these things have taken their toll on my own well being this year but have also brought out the best in other people who have been keen to show support.”
Scoil na Seolta’s opening was raised at a meeting between Education Minister Paul Givan and the Loyalist Communities Council last September. The LCC – which includes representatives of loyalist paramilitary groups – claimed it was causing “polarity and volatility”. The erection of a banner just weeks later calling for the school to relocate from its Montgomery Road site is being treated as a hate crime by the PSNI.
But Linda, manager of Turas, an Irish language project in east Belfast, is determined to look on the bright side as the school moves from its current premises in Garnerville Presbyterian Church.
And this week the Sunday World was given exclusive access to the school.
“It’s a very exciting time. It’s still a work in progress but the nursery has been growing year on year and we have enough children to start P1 in September,” she says.
“It’s a new educational opportunity for east Belfast, an area that has seen problems with low educational achievement.
“It’s an exciting opportunity not just for integrated education but immersive education and we are bringing the benefits of bilingualism to east Belfast for the first time.
“We are trying to build a cohesive society and you do that by bringing children together.”
The campaigner has addressed head-on the controversy which has been ramped up around the new premises.
by threebodysolution
4 comments
Is breá leat é a fheiceáil agus is rud galánta é. Gan amhras, tá Gaeilge ann dúinn ar fad.
Glad to see some movement the language should be welcoming to all (not that it isn’t)
What exactly makes it the first integrated Irish medium school? None of the other Irish medium schools are catholic schools. Is there a narrower criteria that it makes to get some official label?
Great to see it, hope it all goes well! Hopefully the bigoted fucks can stay away and leave the children to their education.
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