Schools and parents will be working closely together to prevent widespread underage drinking by thousands of Junior Cert students who receive their results this morning. Emmet Oliver, Education Correspondent reports.
Over recent years illegal drinking by 15 and 16 year olds has become commonplace on results day. In Dublin city centre in particular, it has become the norm for students to congregate and drink in public, although last year the situation improved slightly.
Increasingly schools are writing to parents about the problem and insisting they take steps to prevent teenagers drinking and missing school the next day.
Some schools now issue results later in the day to prevent students from making plans to meet up and drink. This year almost 60,000 students will be getting results.
Yesterday Ms Barbara Johnson, of the Congress of Catholic Secondary School Parents' Assocations, said responsibility for the problem of underage drinking lay with parents.
"We all know about the problem. It comes up year after year. But ultimately it is the responsibility of parents. They should know where their children are going on Junior Cert results night. This drinking happens outside school hours, so it has virtually nothing to do with schools," she said.
Several schools have begun over recent years to include parents more in the day's events. Father Leonard Moloney, principal of Belvedere College, Dublin, said parents would accompany their sons to this morning's results presentations. He said it made the day a family occasion and often the families involved celebrated the results by having dinner together later in the day.
Mr Sean Ashe, principal of Maynooth post-primary school, said the town had virtually no trouble with underage drinking on Junior Cert results night for many years. However he said he had written to parents several days ago warning them to be vigilant.
He said despite the hype over the problem, he anticipated that 98 to 99 per cent of pupils would attend school the next day.
The president of the ASTI, Mr PJ Sheehy, urged students to celebrate their results in "a reasonable manner".
He called on publicans and others with liquor licences to ask young people for an ID before serving alcohol.