DOES anyone remember the White Paper on Education? Launched last year in a shower of P words by Niamh Bhreathnach - participation, pluralism, parent power - the paper now represents just so much useless verbiage and should be binned. Its credibility has been fatally undermined by the Minister's actions, its commitments have not been honoured, and its philosophical framework has been bent out of shape by political considerations.
Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the row over new gaelscoileanna. Leaving aside the language issue, the growth of all Irish schools is the clearest expression of parental choice in education in Ireland today. Up and down the country, more and more parents are prepared to take upon their own shoulders the task of setting up gaelscoileanna, frequently in the teeth of opposition from other schools which feel threatened by the newcomers.
Very often this results in latter day hedge schools, sheltering in soccer, rugby or GAA clubs and supported by cake sales and voluntary donations until the Department can no longer resist their demands for official recognition and funding.
Regardless of whether you regard the people involved as visionaries or fanatics - usually they are neither - the choices they make are their own and should be respected. In the rhetoric of the White Paper, "the democratic character of this society requires education to embrace the diverse traditions, beliefs and values of its people".
What does the Minister do? She tells the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Irish Language she is "enthusiastic" about the language and the next day turns down applications for recognition from gaelscoileanna in Ballybrack and Enniscorthy. She refuses the applications for these and other schools on the basis of new rules introduced without warning just before the August bank holiday.
The message is clear. Parents can make whatever educational choices they like for their children - but only just as long as they fit in with the Department's plans. Small wonder that one of the first groups to complain about the new rules was Educate Together. It pointed out that they would also militate against parents who want to set up multi denominational schools, by introducing a more stringent quota - 20 junior infants in one year - than previously existed.
But why stop there? Anyone for a school which celebrates rock music or river dancing? Forget it. Not on the curriculum. Anyone for a new school with a non Catholic religious ethos? Unless you can come up with the numbers, try somewhere else.
APPARENTLY, neither Niamh Bhreathnach nor her advisers have thought through the implications of her recent decisions. Their long term effect will be sectarian: the Catholic Church will retain its hold on primary school education and alternatives will find it more difficult than ever to get off the ground. Even some existing schools may be threatened.
One ominous sign was the letter sent last month to the Church of Ireland primary school in Eyrecourt, Co Galway - three weeks before the start of term. With only seven pupils enrolled for the new school year, the one teacher school may no longer be considered "viable" - by the criteria used by Niamh Bhreathnach - but few will dispute its key importance to the scattered Protestant community in east Galway. The letter told the school it was to close at the end of last month, prompting a flurry of activity behind the scenes which led to its hurried withdrawal by embarrassed officials.
It does not have to be this way. Rather than continuing with the begrudgery which has characterised the Department's approach to gaelscoileanna for years, why not change course completely? If so many people are prepared to struggle against the odds to set up all Irish schools, what would happen if the Department's officials were to roll up their shirt sleeves and give them a helping hand?
The result would almost certainly be a jump in the number of gaelscoileanna. Is this such a bad thing? Most new gaelscoileanna do not have a Catholic bishop as patron but rely instead on a body - An Foras Patrunachta - to fulfil the legal role of patron. An Foras is controlled by the parents and teachers involved in the gaelscoileanna movement and is inherently much more democratic and pluralist than the status quo of religious domination.
It would also be a popular move, although not with entrenched interest groups in education such as the INTO. The last comprehensive survey of attitudes to Irish, carried out by Institiuid Teangeolaiochta Eireann in 1993, showed a perceptible shift in favour of education through Irish. Almost a third of those surveyed said they would be willing to send their children to an all Irish primary school, and a quarter to an all Irish secondary school. Seventy per cent said the Government should provide such schools where there was demand.
THE reason why the Department will not suddenly become advocates of gaelscoileanna is, of course, fairly obvious Falling birthrates mean fewer children enrolling in schools every year. The Department is now in the business of closing schools down, rather than helping set up new ones. It is a process which will cause uproar across the country in the coming decade, as schools compete with one another for numbers. Managing that process will be hard enough, without having to deal with the added complication of a new and growing strand of schooling.
Again, it doesn't have to be this way. The fall in numbers is an opportunity, not a threat. It gives the State a chance to get to grips with overcrowded classrooms, provide remedial services where none exist, even embark on new educational adventures by creating jobs for art and music teachers to travel around to small schools in rural areas.
The Department could even stop trying to undermine one teacher primary schools (by providing transport to more "viable" schools in the area) and instead recognise the invaluable social function such schools fulfil in small communities.
Free of the threat of closure, schools could learn to co operate with one another and share resources, rather than look with fear at each other's enrolment figures. The religious grip on education could gradually be loosened, and empty buildings or schoolrooms made available to a variety of groups, including gaelscoileanna.
For all this to happen, the P words would need to make a return appearance. Only this time Ministers, civil servants and advisers paid out of the public purse would have to be prepared to take the platitudes seriously.