THE CHAIRMAN of the Catholic bishops commission on education has expressed surprise at a speech by Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe last Friday in which he said his department “will shortly be providing an initial list of about 10 urban areas that can be used to test the concept of reducing the number of Catholic schools”.
Speaking in Maynooth yesterday, as the Irish Bishops’ Conference began its three-day spring meeting, Bishop Leo O’Reilly said that last November, at a meeting in Dublin with the bishops, the Minister and his officials agreed the Department of Education would undertake research on areas where a reduction in the number of Catholic schools could be tested, and would then get back to the bishops.
“They didn’t do so,” he said, even though Fr Michael Drumm, executive chairman of the Catholic Schools Partnership, had been appointed as liaison person by the church on the matter. “It came as a bit of a surprise, in that sense,” Bishop O’Reilly said.
Mr O’Keeffe was speaking in Dublin to the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association. Queried on the Minister’s mention “of an eventual reduction of Catholic provision in demographically stable urban areas to 60 per cent”, Bishop O’Reilly said “I don’t know where that came from”. He felt such a figure “would vary greatly between the city and the country”.
On the same issue, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said he was “happy, provided that consultation takes place. The big difficulty is that it isn’t just about buildings. It’s about a reorientation of schools’ ethos but also rights of parents and rights of teachers.”
Those in attendance at the bishops’ meeting this week include the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty as well as Dublin auxiliary bishops Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field. All tendered their resignations to Rome last December on being named in the Murphy report. Also present is Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway, an auxiliary bishop of Dublin for seven of the years investigated by the Murphy commission.
Archbishop Martin also expressed doubt about reports that the pope’s letter to the Irish faithful would be delayed because of clerical child sex abuse revelations in Germany and Holland. The letter is expected before the end of this month and is on the agenda for this week’s meeting.
Bishop of Ferns Denis Brennan defended his call last week inviting parishes there “to become part of the process financially” when it came to funding costs arising from clerical child sex abuse.
He said “care of the victims is the top priority in Ferns”. Paying for it was “a matter for decision by the priests, people and religious of Ferns”.
The bishops will be addressed today by Ian Elliott, chief executive of the church’s own child protection watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland.
- Yesterday, Dublin abuse victim Andrew Madden accused the bishops of a collective attempt "to portray those of us who were sexually abused as children by priests as unreasonable in our expectations".
Since returning from Rome, “they have engaged in the most dishonest and reprehensible spinning of the truth”, he said.