Blackrock Boys engage in some of the greatest horseplay of all time.

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

Indeed. They are Irelands elite. Leaders of tomorow in business, politics, law, finance,etc, and so by definition, are not the same as the average Paddy. Which makes it easy to laugh at any characteristic that highlights their difference from the rest of society, and rather unfairly too. Yes they live a charmed and privileged life, but give so much back to society as well, yet dont really tend to get their due credit for that.

This "fee-charging schools are elite" nonsense is overbearing, propagated by the adjective-restricted vocabulary of the average journalist, and encouraged by the schools themselves and the Hyacinth Bucket types who send their children to them.

To put it another way, the fees for Blackrock/Gonzaga/Michaels/Belvedere etc are about €6.5k per annum. In contrast, huge numbers of Irish parents are paying €1000, or more, per child per month for childcare. To only have to pay €6.5k per year for school fees would be a huge financial relief to all those very ordinary parents.

To all the people who have a chip on their shoulder, on either side of the debate, about "private schools", it may interest you to know that about 85% of all Irish students attend private schools. Did you really think the Roman Catholic or Protestant school that the vast majority of us attended was/is owned by the Irish state? It wasn't, and it isn't. Community Colleges and maybe one or two other types of schools are still the only state-owned schools in Ireland, unfortunately.

The distinguishing words you're looking for are not "private schools" but "fee-charging schools" or "fee-charging private schools". And the vast majority of the funding for these private, fee-charging schools is from the Irish state. Without that funding, their fees would be about €30,000 per student per annum. That might qualify them as some sort of very narrowly defined "elite".