The State should urgently reboot the process to divest schools from religious patronage, Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik has said.
She said the process had been started by her party colleague Ruairí Quinn when Minister for Education in 2011 but had effectively stalled since he stood down as minister.
The Labour leader made the call when responding to the publication of a scoping report which disclosed widespread sexual abuse in schools run by religious orders throughout the State.
Speaking before the start of a special parliamentary meeting of her party at the Grand Hotel in Malahide, Ms Bacik also said it was vital that a Redress Scheme be run in parallel with the Commission of Investigation so that survivors are not waiting any longer for justice to be done for them. She also welcomed that the Garda had begun criminal investigations into some of the over 800 alleged abusers identified by victims in 308 schools.
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“We [need] to look at the divestment of schools from religious orders. For far too long, our school system in Ireland, uniquely in Europe, has been dominated by religious [orders].”
She said that over 90 per cent of our primary schools still had religious patronage.
“We need to ensure there’s divestment, that we see that the process initiated by Ruairí Quinn is now speeded up and continued, so that religious orders, complicit in such awful horrors in the past, no longer have authority over our schoolchildren in our education system.”
She said a core “mission” of the Labour Party was to afford children the right to have an equal future and an equal start.
She said in the last redress scheme – in relation to abuse which occurred in religious-run residential settings for children, the orders had not paid their fair share.
“Far too many hid behind what we might describe as the developer’s wife system, where their assets were transferred to a trust. What we want to see with this new set of revelations is that the religious orders made to pay their share.”
Ms Bacik told reporters it was her view that the Commission should begin its work by looking at the 308 schools included in the scoping inquiry and then extending to look at other schools.
She again emphasised the need for a timely redress scheme and said her party was willing to work with the Government to make this happen. She said Minister for Education Norma Foley had worked very closely with other parties during the scoping inquiry and was very respectful of the wishes of survivors throughout the process.
Asked if there was a means of ensuring that religious orders paid their share, Ms Bacik said there was nothing illegal about the trust system but there were “serious ethical questions” that had to be asked about why the orders had done so.
Asked about the responsibility of the State, she said nobody was suggesting the religious orders should bear 100 per cent responsibility.
“Clearly, the State was deeply at fault for failure to regulate, failure to ensure proper governance in schools, for really abdicating responsibility for running and governance of schools and management of schools to religious orders,” she said.
Speaking about her party’s preparation for the general election, she said that it had already selected 16 candidates and was buoyed by strong results in the local and European elections. However, she would not put a figure on how many seats the party expected to win, other than to say she wanted to return with more seats than its present six.
Ms Bacik said the party would not be involved in a vote transfer agreement with any other party before the general election.
“After the election, certainly, we will look to sit down with those parties and representatives who share our vision, our centre left and social democratic values.
“We will be looking to form a bloc for negotiations on any programme for Government to make sure that our Labour vision and values form the heart of the next Government.”
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