Blind school fees refused

COUNCIL chiefs are refusing to pay for a severely disabled teenager to go to Edinburgh's Royal Blind School despite a tribunal decision.

Ciara McGearey, 13, who lost her sight when she was three days old after contracting meningitis, previously attended the blind school, but left when her soldier father was posted to Suffolk.

Now they have returned to the Capital, but the city council argues Ciara, who also has other disabilities, should go to Oaklands special school.

And it has lodged an appeal against the tribunal decision that the blind school was best able to meet Ciara's needs.

Her mother, Rosie McGearey, said: "We feel the treatment we have got from Edinburgh City Council is little short of diabolical."