Breifne College celebrating 50 years in education

Breifne College is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a function to mark the occasion taking place at the Hotel Kilmore on March 28.

Although Cavan Vocational School has been in existence since the 1930s, when it operated from an old building along Farnham Street; this year marks half a century of the school at its present location.

In 1974 the school moved to the new site on the Cootehill Road on the outskirts of Cavan Town. Past and present pupils and teachers are looking forward to the reunion, sharing memories and making new ones.

Fr Jason Murphy is a member of the organising committee and deputy principal of Breifne College where there is currently a staff of 120.

“This is about marking 50 years of vocational education at the school on the Cootehill Road; all the teachers down through the years who contributed to it; and of course Cavan Institute, which evolved from Cavan Vocational School in the 1980s,” explained Fr Jason.

When the school moved, the teachers remaining set up the third level College of Further Education in the old St Clare's building along Main Street, Cavan.

“Actually, the principal of Cavan Vocational School was, for many years, the principal of the Institute because it was off-shoot really; they ran a lot of Post Leaving Cert (PLC) courses, secretarial courses, catering courses etc in the vocational school and they brought all those out and set up Cavan College of Further Education, which later became Cavan Institute,” he continued.

Indeed, it’s fair to say that there have been huge developments in education and within the vocational system over the past 50 years. Cavan’s Breifne College has been at the heart of it all.

“All the schools in Cavan and throughout the country now provide practical subjects like woodwork, engineering, technology but, in the 1970s, Cavan Vocational School was the only school in the area to cater for those practical subjects,” said Fr Jason.

“It attracted a lot of students who wouldn’t have stayed on in education past the Group Cert or Inter Cert and brought them onto the Leaving Cert. Other schools then fed into Cavan - because St Bricin's in Belturbet didn’t do the Leaving Cert at the time, students there would come to Cavan Vocational School to do their Leaving Cert and finish off there.

“Also, there were evening classes run; VEC staff went out to different halls and provided adult education courses in various disciplines and, of course, that went on for many, many years.”

Fr Jason says the event on March 28 is about celebrating “past students” and popular band Rhythm & Sticks will provide the entertainment.

“It is also a past pupil-led event,” he continued. “The amount of entrepreneurs and young men and women who went on to set up their own businesses out of Cavan Vocational School because they got that entrepreneurial spirit there; the likes of Ciaran Callahan, Callahan Electrical; Senator Pauline Tully; Senator Diarmuid Wilson; you name it; Morgan McMonagal, another past student is a plastic surgeon and he was very much involved in the Iraq War.

“The amount of people who have contacted us has been amazing and so many past students have gone into business," outlined Fr Jason.

From letters and emails received by him in recent months in advance of the celebration, Fr Jason said the "closeness" of staff and students is evident. "I think that spirit still stands to this day," he said proudly.

"There wasn’t a ‘them and us’ in the school. It was very much a partnership in education between staff and students. That is something that was fostered in the early days by the staff and has been continuously handed down through the years.”