The Department of Education have refused a request from religious orders to fund the trusteeships of Catholic secondary schools, it has emerged. Representatives from religious congregations, who currently bankroll the Trust offices, met with the Department of Education last month to appeal for future state funding but were turned down.
While the government said it was not opposed to the funding ''in principle'' it could not afford to do so at any date in the short or medium term.
Although trustee boards are voluntary, religious orders have been meeting annual expenses of up to €2.5million for each of the five Trust offices which together represent the majority of Catholic voluntary secondary schools in the country.
Director of Education for the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI), Sr Mary Reynolds, said the religious orders could not meet those expenses indefinitely.
''In the beginning, the religious orders contributed to a Trust fund to meet the expenses for the first five or six years of the Trust, when that runs out we will have to leverage more properties.''
Sr Reynolds was speaking at a conference to launch the inaurgural Catholic Schools Week where several attendees voiced concern about the future provision of Catholic education in Ireland.
The conference heard the state currently contributes €500,000 to the management of Catholic schools.
Sr Elizabeth Maxwell, who co-chairs a religious task group on education, said onerous obligations had been placed on trustees and boards of management under the Education Act 1998 which had ramifications for sourcing voluntary trustees.
There are currently 30,000 lay volunteers involved with the management and running of Catholic schools.
Bishop Leo O'Reilly said in the future, there will be an onus on Catholic communities to ''dig a bit deeper'' to subsidise Catholic schools, as had been the case in the US where parishes had made ''huge sacrifices'' to support schools.
''We haven't had to do that here but we may have to do that in the future,'' said Bishop O'Reilly.
Head of the Joint Managerial Body of Catholic Secondary Schools, Ferdia Kelly, said for years Catholic schools had ''laboured under the inequalities in funding''.
Pupils in Catholic secondary schools receive €90 less in grants than children attending schools in other sectors.
Mr Kelly said schools needed to ''act fast'' before a situation, such as that in Co Leitrim where there was only one Catholic secondary school serving the entire country, became the norm.
Since 2000 there have been 18 amalgamations between 27 Catholic schools and 13 vocational schools which resulted in four Catholic schools.
Of the 31 new schools established since 1992 by the State, only one was a Catholic voluntary school.
Mr Kelly said there was now an urgent need for the establishment of a Catholic Education Service to map out a coherent strategy to secure the future of Catholic education.
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(Source: IC)