Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has defended the Irish government’s proposed legislation that will prohibit Catholic primary schools giving priority to Catholic children in their enrolment policies.
His minister for education, Richard Bruton, secured Cabinet backing for his plan last week which will pave the way for the removal of the so-called “baptism barrier” in Catholic schools. The legislation will mean that oversubscribed Catholic primary schools will no longer be able to favour prospective pupils on the grounds of their religious adherence.
Speaking to The Tablet this week as he officially opened the first new Catholic secondary school in the country for 30 years, Mr Varadkar said: “I think for a small number of schools where there is oversubscription, it is right and proper that children would not be discriminated against based on their religion. Schools are funded by the tax payer and every tax euro is equal no matter what the religion of the parents.”
He stressed that only about 20 per cent of schools are oversubscribed and so the vast majority of the country’s 2,880 Catholic primary schools will not be affected by the legislation which comes into effect in September 2019. There is an exemption for schools of minority faiths such as the Presbyterian Church.
Speaking to RTE Radio, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin indicated that the bishops did not plan a legal challenge to the legislation. However, Dr Martin said the bishops and trustees would have to “robustly defend Catholic ethos in Catholic schools”.
Seamus Mulconry, general secretary of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA), said research into the scale and scope of oversubscribed Catholic schools using faith as an admissions criterion had shown that 17 schools out of about 450 schools in the Dublin area were impacted, totalling 97 applications. “This is an issue about a lack of school places, it is not about religion,” he said. He highlighted that in view of Mr Bruton’s pledge to build an extra 16 schools to address the shortage of school places, these extra places made the proposed legislation “redundant”.
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