{"id":389380,"date":"2026-04-09T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/389380\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T06:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T06:50:08","slug":"dublin-school-principal-says-half-of-his-students-are-homeless-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/389380\/","title":{"rendered":"Dublin school principal says half of his students are homeless \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both teachers and their pupils are being hit by the ongoing housing crisis<\/a>, the Irish National Teachers\u2019 Organisation (INTO<\/a>) conference in Killarney has heard, with the principal of one Dublin<\/a> inner city school telling delegates half of his students are now homeless.<\/p>\n

Mark Candon of the North Wall\u2019s St Laurence O\u2019Toole\u2019s CBS said Zoom classes during Covid had provided a window into the homes of the school\u2019s students, many of whom are members of migrant families living in temporary accommodation. He recalled seeing a room on one occasion where seven people lived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was inspired by Strumpet City to work in the city centre but those things aren\u2019t just 100 years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Irish Times after a motion urging trade unions to do more campaigning on housing was passed overwhelmingly, Candon referenced a case highlighted by another teacher, Tracie Tobin from Limerick, of a five year-old pupil who had lived for three years in a hotel room.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have kids like that, they go back to the hotel where they are [living], close the door and mightn\u2019t come out until it\u2019s time to go to school again. Unless their parents are really good about getting them out to the park, they don\u2019t have the room to develop. <\/p>\n

\u201cKids are resilient and they\u2019ll adapt but one of the things that we do is try to make sure our kids are in clubs after school and stuff like that.\u201d <\/p>\n

He says the activities are good for the children\u2019s physical health but also allow them to make connections with classmates from the area.<\/p>\n

Some are moved on, particularly the international protection applicants. Others, the conference heard, can end up with long commutes to get to school after a family relocates for whatever reason, either because their parents can\u2019t find them school places elsewhere or because their work remains close by.<\/p>\n

Its city centre location, Candon says, has at least helped the school attract teachers down the years as \u201call roads lead to where we are\u201d. Yet while the public transport options are a definite plus, Candon marvels at the growing distances being covered by his staff of 12 to and from work each day. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Serious row rages over existing spending levels as teachers demand more resourcesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a full staff now thankfully, it\u2019s quite settled, but they are living further away … Rush, Lusk, Clonsilla, Celbridge. Places where they can afford to buy, that\u2019s the deal, but at least they are able to do that and come to work on the train. <\/p>\n

\u201cMore widely, I\u2019d say there is still pressure on staffing because newly qualified teachers used to stay in Dublin for a few years. When you\u2019re young and have a bit of money to spend, where else would you want to be? But that\u2019s changed because they can\u2019t afford the rents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eilis Flannelly, who works in St Fiachra\u2019s, Beaumont, says she and her husband can only afford to live in Marino because they bought a home 10 years ago and he has a better paying job. Traditionally, the school\u2019s 40 or so teachers lived in the local suburbs, but younger colleagues reside in Dublin\u2019s satellite towns which, she suggests, will also soon be out of financial reach.<\/p>\n

\"EilisEilis Flannelly, a teacher at St Fiachra’s in Beaumont, at the INTO conference in Killarney. Photograph: Emmet Malone <\/p>\n

Flannelly and her husband paid \u20ac330,000 for their three bedroom terraced home but, she says, \u201cif we were to buy it now as we bought it, it would be somewhere around half a million euro. That\u2019s why it\u2019s becoming totally unsustainable for teachers on a teacher\u2019s wage like mine is, at the moment, to even consider living in an urban centre like Dublin\u201d.<\/p>\n

Flannelly earns about \u20ac70,000, a wage she readily acknowledges might be considered a good income, but suggests that by the time they pay for diesel, groceries, their mortgage and childcare, they don\u2019t feel well off.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf my husband didn\u2019t do the job he does, we wouldn\u2019t have a hope of living where we live,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd we would most likely have gone to Mayo, where his parents live, or to Laois, where my parents live, before our children were born, to buy a house.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both teachers and their pupils are being hit by the ongoing housing crisis, the Irish National Teachers\u2019 Organisation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[160,615,3662,61,4897,60,43,28205],"class_list":{"0":"post-389380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-covid-19","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-housing-crisis","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-into","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-second-level"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}