THE DECISION by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn to establish a
Forum on Patronage and Pluralism is welcome.
The need for some kind of
forum to tease out these issues has been a long standing demand of the
Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) but former education
ministers, Batt O’Keeffe and Mary Coughlan, appeared reluctant to
establish it. Mr Quinn maintains it will not be a talking shop.
Its
task, he says, will be to work out the practicalities of how
transfer/divesting can be advanced to ensure that demands for diversity
of patronage can be identified and met.
The debate on patronage
was triggered three years ago when the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid
Martin acknowledged the church was over-represented in Irish education.
At the time, Dr Martin suggested that perhaps one in four Catholic
schools could be divested.
But he has not been prescriptive about the
degree of control the church should retain or divest in Irish education.
It
is by no means certain if his open-minded approach is shared by other
members of the hierarchy.
Catholic Church leaders are reported as being
“shocked’’ by suggestions from Mr Quinn that some 50 per cent of 3,000
primary schools under the church’s control could be divested.
There are
indications that a forthcoming position paper from the Catholic Schools
Partnership – established by the Episcopal Conference and the Conference
of Religious in Ireland – may adopt a less accommodating stance than
that signalled by Dr Martin.
It is to be hoped that the church
will not retreat to the trenches.
The facts are as outlined by Mr Quinn
in an interview on Today FM yesterday.
A situation where the church
controls almost 90 per cent of primary schools does not reflect the
“contours of modern Ireland’’.
In today’s schools, the church cannot
even be certain that the teacher charged with preparing his pupils for
the sacraments shares the Catholic faith.
In the debate to come,
the views of parents must take centre stage. An Irish Times poll last
year found that 61 per cent of people favour transferring control of
primary schools from the Catholic Church to the State.
It may be that
other surveys and plebiscites are required among local communities to
assess fully local preferences.
What is clear is that the existing
system of patronage is outmoded and requires change.
As the INTO has
noted, the forum should help to shape a new future for primary education
in Ireland.
The Catholic Church must be a willing partner in this
process.