CATHOLIC SCHOOL principals have reacted angrily to a speech by First Minister Peter Robinson in which he said he opposed state funding for Catholic education.
The DUP leader said the current schools provision was “a benign form of apartheid”.
The Catholic Principals Association has accused Mr Robinson of “rabble rousing” in a manner which was “a throw back to the bad old days of religious intolerance”. Head of the association Dr Séamus Quinn said the First Minister was seeking to remove from parents a key right to choice in the education of their children. “The fundamental right of parents to seek a faith-based education for their child must be acknowledged,” Dr Quinn said.
He said Mr Robinson “should be well aware why Northern Ireland has a Catholic-managed system”.
“The Northern Ireland state having singularly failed to provide for its Catholic population from inception.”
Mr Robinson made his controversial remarks at a speech in Belfast on Friday marking the installation of a DUP mayor in the borough of Castlereagh.
The DUP leader has also repeated his call for a smaller Executive and Assembly and last month spelled out his plans for the amalgamation of certain Stormont departments and the abolition of Executive posts.
Dr Quinn continued: “Students from these successful Catholic schools challenged the blatant social injustices facing the minority population and have, in no small measure, transformed Northern Ireland,” he said.
“It was as late as the 1990s before Catholic schools finally achieved parity of funding with state schools. However, the years of chronic under-investment by the state in Catholic schools has yet to be fully addressed.” Sinn Féin and the SDLP have also criticised Mr Robinson. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said he believed the First Minister was “making a mistake”.
“If you go for a head-on collision with the so-called vested interests, that is a collision course which will lead us into a total and absolute mess,” he warned.