HISTORIC talks get under way next week on the handing over of some of the Catholic Church's 3,200 primary schools to the State.Catholic bishops, led by the Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin and the Chair of the Bishops' Commission for Education, Bishop Leo O'Reilly, will meet officials of the Department of Education and Science on Thursday.
The Catholic Church is patron of 92pc of primary schools and the process represents the biggest shake-up in Irish education for decades.
Declining vocations make it difficult for the Church to maintain the day-to-day running of schools, while the increasing cultural and religious mix in Ireland has fuelled demand for different types of patronage.
The talks will focus on identifying the schools that the bishops are willing to hand over and how it can be done.
Discussions
The discussions will include issues such as the transfer of property, and what, if any, compensation should be paid, and legal questions where schools are held in trust for their local communities.
Decisions must also be taken about who will run the schools with the multi-denominational patron body, Educate Together, Irish language gaelscoileanna, and vocational education committees in the frame.
It doesn't mean a withdrawal of the Church from primary education but it will be concentrated in fewer schools.
However, Mr Frank Wyse, assistant secretary at the Department of Education and Science told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that the State had to be careful that the process did not replace one problem with another.
Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) general secretary John Carr said there was a need for openness and transparency around the process, with an overall plan about future school provision.
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