The Irish Catholic
‘Religious ethos has no place in schools’ – Labour
Date: 19 Jan 2012
http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/religious-ethos-has-no-place-schools-labour
‘Religious ethos’ has no place in Irish schools according to the Labour Party’s spokesman on education. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD, vice-chair of the Oireachtas education committee, told The Irish Catholic ”that religious ethos has no place in the educational system of a modern republic”. His comments come as senior Church sources have accused the Labour Party of ”bullying” Catholic schools by falsely accusing them of breaking the law over enrolment policies that admit Catholic children ahead of other children if the school is over-subscribed. The accusation comes in a Labour Party document circulated to Catholic schools. The document — known within the Labour Party as the ‘Clontarf Report’ — insists that the schools are acting illegally when they give preference to Catholic children in the event of demand for places outstripping availability.
However, one senior Church source said ”there isn’t anyone working in the legal profession who would take such a claim seriously. This is nothing more than bullying”. ”The Department [of Education and Skills] fully acknowledges that faith-based schools have a right to admit children of their own faith before those of others where the local faith-based school is over-subscribed,” the source said. Deputy Ó Ríordáin, a former principal in a Catholic school, confirmed that he is supportive of the ‘Clontarf’ position yet, while accusing Catholic schools of breaking the law, the deputy also calls for the existing law to be changed, saying: ”I would like to see the law amended so that faith-based schools would be unable to reserve places for children of a particular denomination where a school is over-subscribed.
”I see no reason for to give a faith-based school any protection” to ensure that it can fulfil its mission to provide a faith-based education in line with the denominational ethos of the school by way of an admissions policy, he said. Dr John Murray of Mater Dei Institute of Education said the Labour move amounted to an attempt to ”intimidate” the schools. He said: ”I hope this isn’t indicative of the attitude of the wider Labour Party to denominational schools because if it is, it is deeply worrying and needs to be strongly resisted. ”It is nothing less than an attack on the religious freedom of denominational schools,” he said. Dr Murray insisted that such a push would not just affect Catholic schools.
”A curb on the enrolment policy of denominational schools would hit Church of Ireland schools particularly hard because Church of Ireland children are often a small minority in their own communities and if their schools couldn’t admit Church of Ireland children first, then they would face the prospect of having to turn away the very children they were established to serve,” he said.
Mr Ó Ríordáin’s trenchant views will surprise many coming just months after Education Minister and Mr Ó Ríordáin’s party colleague Ruairí Quinn told a conference in Dublin’s Mater Dei Institute that ”religious education will have an important place in the future of education in Ireland”.
Mr Quinn has also insisted that denominational schools will continue to be supported by the Government, apparently putting him at odds with Mr Ó Ríordáin.
”It begs the question: ‘what does the Labour Party really have in store for Catholic education’,” another senior Church source said. ”Is it Mr Quinn or Mr Ó Ríordáin who is articulating where the party is coming from? Catholic voters have a right to know,” he said.
A recent profile of Mr Ó Ríordáin by The Irish Times education editor Seán Flynn said the Dublin North Central deputy ”is viewed as a future education minister”.
It noted that he has been a ”major influence” on Minister Quinn.
Filed under: Education
Ethos and admission policy do not amount to the same thing the Irish Catholic lead article is full of bile gross and lazy distortions of the facts outlined in the most accurate and comprehensive report of the historical facts on the legal situation on National Education in Ireland. From 1831 to 2001 the Rights of Children were not been curtailed by a Catholics first admission policy Apartheid can also be a system of religious Segregation enforced by the Church you must produce a Baptismal cert to get your child a local education in a Clontarf National School. If a modern day Mary and Joseph with their new born Child arrived on our shores they would be refused admission to the local national school. Any free thinking democratic liberal must be appalled by the right wing mindset that underpins this article’s belief’s this would have gone down well in the old South African National Party or in the segregationist Southern United States. May God help the Church from itself .A hundred years after the signing of the Ulster Covenant which railed against Home Rule is Rome rule. We are a great little island with the most religiously segregated primary school system in the modern democratic world Christ and Caesar still go hand in glove