Sluggish progress in the divestment of Catholic schools to other patrons in Ireland would be greatly improved if some of those making the loudest noises adopted a different attitude, the general secretary of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association has said.
Seamus Mulconry said: “If they stopped treating it as an ideological point-scoring exercise and looked at it as a shared challenge for both Church and the State, I think the problem is solvable.”
The issue is not new. A report by an advisory group of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in primary schools in 2012 looked at 250 schools in 18 Catholic dioceses, of which it said “about 50 may be divested” to non-Catholic boards of management.
Such transfer was not an option, it said, for 1,700 “stand-alone” rural schools, which it called on to be as inclusive as possible.
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Then minister for education Ruairí Quinn, who set up the forum in 2011, said he hoped to see 1,500 of the then 3,200 Catholic primary schools in Ireland divested. A spokesman for the Catholic School Partnership at the time said a transfer figure of 10 per cent was more realistic. It was nearer the mark.
An Irish Times poll at the time indicated 61 per cent support for State control of primary schools. A survey by the Catholic bishops in 2007 found just half of parents surveyed would choose a school under a religious denomination.
As of 2017, just 10 schools in Ireland had completed the divestment process. Much of the opposition to divestment has been at local level, strongly felt and expressed, even by non-practising parents happy with the status quo. Clergy at local level have also objected despite divestment having bishops’ support.
Regardless, then minister for education Richard Bruton announced plans that year to speed up the divestment process. The goal was that, by 2030, 400 non- and multi-denominational schools would be secured through a combination of new starts and transferring patronage of hundreds more away from religious bodies.
[ Large number of parents seek shift to multidenominational ethos in schoolsOpens in new window ]
There has also been misinformation. In 2019, parents at a north Dublin school intended for divestment were told references to God such as “dia duit” might no longer be permitted, while music with religious references would not be allowed.
Such scaremongering provoked then minister for education Joe McHugh to issue a statement clarifying that “Christmas will not be cancelled”.
“Neither will any typical school holiday like Easter or St Patrick’s Day. Pancake Tuesday won’t be banned. Nor will holidays or celebrations associated with the ancient Celtic/pagan festival of Halloween,” he said.
The central issue then and since was probably best articulated by Fr Gerry O’Connor, a priest who has been on many school boards of management and was involved in an attempted divestment.
He told The Irish Times in April 2019: “You’re dealing with parents, teachers and the wider community. It can be very hard to get all three to move in one direction. It’s so much easier in a greenfield or start-up school.”
In 2023, stung by criticism in the Dáil of the slow pace of change in divestment from Catholic control, Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese said in a statement: “This impatience can often become a desire to impose desired outcomes, regardless of local views. The Catholic patrons, as bishops and pastors, are not minded to simply impose solutions on to communities.”
Then minister for education, Norma Foley, dismissing such criticisms of the church at the time, said: “There is to be no bullying or coercion here.” She recalled how “the programme for government contains a commitment to expand the plurality of our schools to reflect the full breadth of society and improve parental choice”.
She again cited the target of 400 multidenominational primary schools by 2030, which was finally abandoned in the most recent programme for government. It was replaced with a vague aspiration to expand parental choice even as 88 per cent of Ireland’s now 2,800 primary schools have a Catholic ethos in a State where 69 per cent of the population said they were Catholic in the 2022 census.
[ The Irish Times view on school divestment: painfully slowOpens in new window ]
The preliminary results of the national primary school survey, published earlier this month by the Department of Education, represent the latest effort at generating forward momentum in school divestment.
It found about 60 per cent of parents in denominational schools wish to retain their school’s ethos, while a significant minority do not.
In Wicklow, 50.5 per cent wanted their schools to retain their religious ethos; this was the case in more than 70 per cent of schools in Longford, Donegal and Monaghan.
Seamus Mulconry said the strong support “shown by parents for faith-based education is very gratifying, but the right of the 16 per cent who want change must, of course, also be respected and vindicated”.
“It is now essential that the department swiftly publishes the survey in its entirety so that schools can have clarity around their future,” said .
“For years”, he said, the Catholic bishops had been expressing their support for divestment. “Schools are communities, and have to be encouraged, not bullied.”
Divestment was “a shared challenge” involving Church and State, he said, “but which some in Irish society see as an ideological matter”.
Hildegarde Naughton, the seventh minister for education to take on the issue since the 2011 forum, says there is an ”appetite” for reform but patrons “will have the ultimate say” on any changes.
The release of school-level data from the department survey may provide momentum in the coming months, but history suggests there will be no overnight transformation.
