Movement to force Irish Church out of education grows

HUNDREDS OF people have taken part in a protest in Dublin calling on the Government to strip the Church of its right to prioritise Catholics in its allocation of school places, writes Sarah Mac Donald.

The protest was organised by a Hindu, Roopesh Panicker, who wrote in The Irish Times about his difficulty getting his daughter into a Dublin Catholic school. Protestors called for Catholic divestment from education and for a repeal of the act that allows schools to operate a Catholic First policy. The protest comes amid concerns that the Government is deliberately withdrawing funding from Catholic schools.

Speaking at the Iona Institute on 15 October, Eamonn Conway, head of theology and religious studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, called for Catholic school trusts to investigate whether or not the state was withdrawing funding for renovations “to make some faith-based schools no longer viable”.

Echoing his concerns, Ferdia Kelly, general secretary of the Joint Managerial Body, a network of 400 voluntary secondary schools, told The Tablet: “The clear facts show that the typical school in the voluntary secondary sector is in receipt of less state funding than a similar-sized school in either the community/ comprehensive or the Education and Training Board sectors.”

Professor Conway also criticised government plans to introduce a new programme on religion, beliefs and ethics for primary schools, which will require denominational schools to teach a secularist understanding of religious faith.