REDRESS BOARDS:RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS should transfer legal ownership of their schools and educational infrastructure to the State, Labour education spokesman Ruairí Quinn has said.
This way they would fully share the costs of the institutional redress boards, without further financial burdens on their ageing communities, he said at the Labour party conference in Galway.
Mr Quinn told delegates the 18 religious congregations were only paying 10 per cent of the current €1.3 billion cost of the institutional redress boards, established to compensate the victims of abuse while under State care in religious-run institutions.
He said the Labour Party in government would increase investment in education to 7 per cent of GDP.
Delegates at the Labour Party conference voted for the proposal to establish a forum on the future patronage of the State’s 3,300 schools. A demand was also made at the conference for the Equality Authority to “do its job” and take a case to enforce legislation against “Catholics first” enrolment policies.
John Suttle, Dublin North Central, said a “Catholics first” admissions policy was against article 42.2 of the Constitution because it “interferes with the rights of parents” in the matter of religious formation. He claimed it was illegal under the 1998 Education Act and the Equal Status Act 2000, “which does not allow religious discrimination on entry to a school. There is an exception, but this does not apply to national schools under Catholic patronage”, he said.
John Walsh from Clonsilla, Dublin, said families, particularly those in rural Ireland, have to send their children up to 40 miles each day to go to an Educate Together school when children should all be educated together in the same schools where they lived.
Cllr Aodhan Ó Riordáin said “the only thing more frightening than Mary Coughlan as Minister for Education is having a Fine Gael minister”. And he said: “If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance or illiteracy. They are much more expensive.”
John Nesbitt said “parents should baptise children because they want to, not because they have to” to get their children into a Catholic school, and they often have to swear to a God they might not believe in to have their child educated.
Mr Quinn told delegates the dominance of Catholic Church control and thinking was “no longer appropriate for this day and age”.
The party backed a call for a forum on the future patronage arrangements for the State’s 3,300 national schools.
