Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 92: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will provide a list of community schools, tabulating their approximate opening date, the names of the participating religious orders and the amount of capital money paid towards the school in each case by each religious order at this time; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32421/11]

Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 93: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will take into complete public charge the ownership and operation of any community school when the religious interests have not met with their obligations under the Deed of Trust setting up such schools and dispense with their services as trustees or managers of these schools. [32422/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 92 and 93 together.

My Department is compiling the list of community schools and the religious trustees as sought by the Deputy. This will be sent to the Deputy shortly. The Deed of Trust to which the Deputy refers essentially grounded the roles and responsibilities of the trustees of the schools on a property lease relating to the plot of ground involved.

Subsequently the Education Act 1998 defined a school patron as the persons who at the commencement of the legislation stood appointed as trustees. Accordingly the trustees of community schools became the joint patrons of the school concerned. In general under the Act the powers conferred on a patron and the functions to be exercised by a patron are not property dependent but derive from the legislation itself.

As their membership declined religious orders involved as patrons or trustees of voluntary secondary schools have over recent years been making arrangements for the patronage and governance of their schools through the creation of trust boards. The withdrawal of the religious orders from school patronage is also an issue in relation to community schools and must inform policy development in relation to the patronage and governance of those schools.

Over the past decade policy in relation to property ownership of schools has also evolved with the state increasingly purchasing sites for schools instead of relying on school trustees or patrons to provide land or partial funding for schools, and with the use of the PPP model of procurement.

A review of the deed of trust of community schools is currently underway which, inter alia, is looking at the whole concept of the relevance of a property-based model in the case of community schools.

Some religious orders have sought to provide for their exit from individual Deeds of Trust and a transfer or their role and functions. My Department has asked the religious orders and church authorities, if they are seeking the preservation of catholic joint patronage, to consider the creation of a single catholic patron to discharge the functions of patron instead of individual orders or trust boards. While information regarding historic financial contributions towards construction costs made by the religious orders when the community schools were first established is not readily available, the Deputy will appreciate from the information that I have provided above that there are wider and more significant issues to be teased out in determining either the appropriate patronage and governance arrangements for the schools concerned under the Education Act or property ownership arrangements into the future.