Minister rules out church veto on school boards

THE CHURCHES will not be allowed to set preconditions when schools are co opting members of the local community on to boards of management, the Minister for Education has said.

Ms Breathnach also assured parents that their consent would have to be obtained before any changes are made to the composition of school boards or to the ethos of schools.

She was responding to a report in yesterday's Irish Times which revealed that a new legal document for 3,200 primary schools would give the religious patrons wide ranging powers of veto over the management of their schools.

The National Parents' Council [Primary] warned that it would not accept a document which failed to accord to parents and children full constitutional rights.

Ms Breathnach said that the confidential document was one of a number of drafts which the partners in education were considering under a facilitation process designed to advance the "sharing of power" between the churches, parents and teachers.

The Minister said that she "rejected outright" the claim that new guarantees of church control in primary schools had been drawn up on her behalf, or would be copperfastened in law.

The document was drawn up by the facilitator appointed by the Minister, Mr Tom McCarthy following 18 months of talks between school managers, parents and the Irish National Teachers' Organisation.

"The operation of the facilitation process is independent of the Department of Education. The document has not been agreed by the partners in education or approved by the Minister", Ms Breathnach said.

The document proposes that Catholic schools could require the two co opted members of the board to have a "commitment" to Catholic education. In Church of Ireland schools, these members would have to be active members of the church.

However, Ms Breathnach said yesterday that, if there was to be a genuine sharing of power on the boards, then parents, teachers and the patrons' nominees must be free to select the two co opted members without any preconditions.

Mr David Meredith, secretary of the Church of Ireland board of education, said that he was at a loss to understand which preconditions the Minister was talking about.

Educate Together, the management body for multi denominational schools, said that it was concerned about the direction taken by the talks.

Mr Brendan Mac Cormaic, chairman of Foras Patrunachta na Scoileanna Lan Ghaeilge, said he would prefer the proposals to change the composition of school boards to be dropped altogether.