“Suffer little children who come onto me. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Every hour of every day, the young, the weak and the vulnerable – our children – are the voiceless victims of intolerable cruelty and we simply let it happen. Stripped of their rights, their dignity, and most importantly, their voices, these children are reduced to physical, emotional and psychological derelicts, their lives a silent testimonial to the power of human endurance.

Children’s Voices is a book written by First Years (Group 112/113). It was launched in the Dunamaise Theatre, Portlaoise during May 2006. The book is a compilation of poems and short stories based on the theme of the paragraph above: Child Labour, Exploitation and Poverty.

Led by Maeve Ingoldsby, ably assisted by Ms Stella Fitzgerald, these students spent many enjoyable weeks during the spring term perfecting the craft of poetry and short story.

This project was under the aegis of “Poetry Ireland”.

During January 2008 Maeve worked with the Transition Year students who completed a Creative Writing Course.


Here is a sample of a Poem and a Story from “Children’s Voices.”

Constant Labour

By Martin Delaney

Copyright © St. Fergal’s College.

The Dump

By Kate Dowling and Siobhan McEvoy

It was a day like every other day. The sun was shining high in the sky and the smell of rubbish would nearly make you faint. All you could see was rubbish for miles and miles. There were mountains of rubbish everywhere. The whole place was alive with rats and creepy crawlies of every description. There was so much vermin around, you would think the dump was moving. Everywhere, you could see scraggy children in tattered clothes sifting through the rubbish. We work from dawn to dusk for little more than a pittance in these horrendous conditions. It’s our job to go through the rubbish and collect anything at all that we can sell, such as copper, tin etc.
On this day the heat and the stench were so bad that I could not breathe. It felt as if the whole place was coming in on top of me. The next thing I remember, is waking up in the shack. I later realised that my friends had picked me up and carried me there, even though losing time for them meant losing money. For these half-starved children, this break from their work could mean going without food.
That day, we decided to go far away try to find some other way of living. We would have to escape these terrible conditions or we could end up on the rubbish pile. So, we left the dump and walked and walked and walked until we all dropped with exhaustion.
We were sorry to leave our families but we had to escape this way of life and make a better living for ourselves. We were at the end of our tether when we came across this stranger, who told us of a faraway land, where the streets were painted gold. This place that he described to us was Ireland, where the Celtic Tiger roars and roars. He told us there were golden opportunities there for anyone who wished to work. In no time at all, we would have enough money saved to send to our families. This seemed the perfect solution, but there’s only one snag. How do we get out of this country?

Copyright © St. Fergal’s College.