Blackrock College

Template:IrishSchoolInfoBox Blackrock College (Irish: Coláiste na Carraige Duibhe) is a Catholic, voluntary, fee-paying secondary school for boys, located in Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland.

The College, set in 56 acres (227,000 m²) lies 6 kilometres from the city centre of Dublin. Founded by the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Holy Spirit in 1860, Blackrock College was the first of the Order's five schools in Ireland and is run by the Congregation in close co-operation with a dedicated group of lay personnel. It accommodates approximately 1000 day and boarding students (with a majority of day students). The annual fees in 2005 were €4,550 for day pupils, €12,250 for Irish boarders, and €13,450 for overseas boarders. [1]

Willow Park School, a private primary school that acts as the College's principal feeder, is also run by the Order and is situated on the same campus. Until the early 1970s, St. Michael's College in Ballsbridge was also a feeder school for Blackrock College, but St Michael's now has classes up to the Leaving Certificate.

Known originally as The French College (because it provided a broad French style of education), Blackrock College was founded in 1860 by Père Jules Leman, CSSp, and other French members of the Holy Ghost Order with a dual aim - namely to train personnel for missionary service in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and provide a first-class Catholic education for Irish boys, something not widely available at the time. In response to changing circumstances, a highly successful Civil Service training department and university college were established (as University College, Blackrock) and flourished for some 40 years in the Williamstown Castle part of the College. When public examinations at secondary level were introduced, Blackrock College was seen to excel. Though founded by a wholly clerical team, lay personnel were soon introduced – their numbers increasing over the years, as finances permitted. As of 2005, there are extremely few clergy remaining in the teaching staff itself, coinciding with declining numbers of priests in religious orders in Ireland in recent decades.

The principal sport in the college is rugby, with Blackrock having held the Leinster Schools Senior Cup 65 times, including the competition's inception in 1887. It has also won the Leinster Schools Junior Cup 45 times. Additionally, the school has simultaneously held both cups 23 times. Current Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan was head coach at Blackrock College.^{[citation needed]} The school also plays other sports such as basketball, tennis, golf, athletics and squash. Cricket, Gaelic Games and water polo are also played recreationally.

The school produces the annual Leman Festival Concert (presented by staff and students in the National Concert Hall in Dublin), regular choral and orchestral concerts and several annual dramatic productions.[2]

The college also has a debating society, whose members have competed at national and international levels.^{[citation needed]} One of the college Alumni, Shane Murphy (now a Senior Counsel), won the 1985 World University Debating Championship at McGill University, representing the Honourable Society of the King's Inns.^{[citation needed]}

A transition year program to set up and maintain a radio station, broadcasting to the surrounding south Dublin area, is undertaken annually. It is the only such project in the country. All of the administrative work, promotion and content-creation is the labour of transition year students. The station also allows programming submissions from other schools to be broadcast.^{[citation needed]}

The spiritual and missionary aspect of the school's inception has been maintained, despite the worldwide decline of new clerics in the Catholic church. Many charitable causes are supported by the students; most notably the transition year students of the school are behind the annual St. Patrick's Day Badge appeal which raises large sums of money throughout Ireland for the Irish charities GOAL and Aidlink. The St. Patrick's Day project is estimated to have raised over € 5,000,000 for charity, raising over € 220,000 in 2005 alone.

The school also has a longstanding relationship with The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, contribiting large sums of money raised through various projects. For example, the proceeds of the annual sale of Christmas Trees in the college are donated. In 2005 alone, the Christmas Tree project raised € 8,300 and the total amount raised for the Society in that year is estimated to be in excess of € 10,000.

The college is very involved with humanitarian projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most notable in this respect is the contribution of the college's cycling club (the Willow Wheelers). In 2006, their annual sponsored 100 mile cycle raised in excess of € 6,000. The club also annually sends a group of self-funded volunteers to help with humanitarian projects in Africa, most commonly: establishing clean water supplies for villages and constructing schoolhouses/infirmaries or similar institutions.

Bob Geldof, initiator of the Band Aid and Live Aid movements for famine relief in the 1980s, was a student at the college, although he often said that he hated his time there. Another student was Frank Duff, the founder of the main worldwide Catholic lay movement, the Legion of Mary.

The Des Places Educational Association, as College Patron, maintains the Spiritan ethos in all five schools – Blackrock, Rockwell, St. Mary's, St. Michael's and Templeogue – conducted by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit in Ireland.

The school received significant negative national TV and newspaper coverage in Ireland following the death of Brian Murphy, a former student of Gonzaga College who died following a drunken fight outside Club Anabel in Dublin 4 on the morning of 31 August 2000. Four former Blackrock College pupils — Dermot Laide, Desmond Ryan, Andrew Frame and Sean Mackey — were arrested and charged with manslaughter.

During the subsequent trial, headmaster Alan MacGinty gave evidence that Laide came to meet him on the morning following the incident before he approached the police. MacGinty denied in court that his motivation for asking Laide and another former pupil to write separate accounts of the incident before contacting police was to protect the good name of the school.

In 2004, Laide was sentenced to four years imprisonment for manslaughter and violent disorder. Mackey was sentenced to two years, and Ryan received nine months, both for violent disorder. Laide's conviction for manslaughter was later quashed. He served 19 months of a two year sentence on the charge of violent disorder. He was released in September 2005.

On April 24th 2006, it was announced that the DPP (the Irish state prosecutor) did not intend to proceed with a retrial in his case. Dermot Laide's previous conviction for manslaughter, was declared nolle prosequi by Judge Michael White and Laide was told he was "free to go" and is presumed innocent.

A revised report from the new state pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy, who was not present at the autopsy, stated

This young man died after an assault. The injuries he received were relatively minor and would not be expected to cause his death. It is most likely that his head injury was complicated by alcohol-induced apnoea (stopping of breathing) and acute brain swelling, resulting in hypoxia/ischaemic brain injury and death

The previous state pathologist, Dr John Harbison who retired in 2003, had not considered alcohol a potentially complicating factor. Dr. Harbison is considered unfit at this time to give evidence in this case on medical grounds[3].

In March 2007, Dr Cassidy revised her opinion of the cause of death following receipt of a previously withheld report from the DPP. The case was then referred back to the DPP by the Dublin City Coroner's court.[4],[5]

Blackrock College was the subject of much media comment during the trial. According to Andrew Lynch writing in the Sunday Business Post on 27 March 2004: "Reading the more sensationalist accounts of the case,you would have got the impression that Blackrock College itself was in the dock"^[1]. Three newspapers were found in contempt of court for their coverage of the trial, and fined a total of €21,250 [6].

The culture of Blackrock College and other South Dublin and Leinster rugby playing schools has been parodied in a series of satirical novels and articles by the author Paul Howard. The fictional protagonist, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly (ROCK) who attends the fictinal rugby-obsessed school Castlerock College (an amalgamation of Castleknock College and Blackrock College) is depicted with a set of character flaws that match the negatively perceived aspects of Blackrock's culture. The tone of these stories is more one of gentle mocking than heavy satire and the author claims that many of the targets of his humour enjoy his books[7].

• Barry Andrews^[2]
• Des Bishop^[3]
• Shane Byrne^[4]
• Victor Costello^[5]
• Paul Costelloe^[1][6]
• Leo Cullen^[7]
• John Cardinal D'Alton^[8]
• Éamon de Valera^[6][9]
• Craig Doyle^[6]
• Frank Duff^[9]
• Dave Fanning^[1][6]
• Luke Fitzgerald ^[10]
• Neil Francis ^[11]
• Bob Geldof^[6]
• Ronan Keane^[1][6]
• James Macmahon^[12]
• Hugo MacNeill^[11]
• John Charles McQuaid^[9]
• David McWilliams^[13]
• Flann O'Brien^[14]
• Niall O'Brien^[15]
• Pádraic Ó Conaire^[16]
• Brian O'Driscoll^[6][11]
• Liam O'Flaherty^[17]
• Ardal O'Hanlon^[6]
• Rory O'Hanlon^[18]
• Ruairí Quinn^[1]
• Alain Rolland^[19]
• Fergus Slattery^[11]
• Ryan Tubridy^[1]

• Blackrock College - official website
• Willow Park School - official website
• The Castle - boarding school website
• Past Pupil's Union
• GOAL-Aidlink Badge Project
• Sunday Business Post article about the killing of Brian Murphy
• School head denies report written to protect image
• Ex-Rock Boys Net - Not an official Blackrock College site - a fun place to come and reminisce.