Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

For the past three years, I have been one of the Opposition spokespersons on education. The public debate on ownership, control and patronage of our schools has been waged on the airwaves and in newspapers, but it has effectively taken three years for the matter to be discussed in this House. The Tánaiste now says that she wants to engage in a debate and she sees this House as the vehicle for doing so. We are coming at this very late, however, and in an unstructured manner. If one wanted to organise a debate involving all the stakeholders in Irish education, including the patrons and partners, one would not do it this way.

This debate has raged for many years, yet now - one minute to midnight, as it were - our national Parliament is holding the first ever debate in this area. It is not the way we should be doing business. I want to hear the comments of colleagues on all sides of the House, but I also want to hear in a structured, public way the views of the patrons, parents, teachers and their representatives. That should happen in a way that allows for proper dialogue and debate. Statements do not allow for that, however, even through the elected Members of this House. We need a national forum which could sit publicly, similar to the forum established in the 1980s on Northern Ireland, as a means of teasing out all these issues. They are complicated issues, which are tinged by history and culture. We will not arrive at an easy solution on this because of that very debate. I repeat my call for a national forum on education to deal exclusively with the patronage, control and ownership of our schools.

We are meeting today on the first anniversary of the publication of the Ryan report. If ever there was a low point in Irish public administration, it was in respect of the indemnity deal negotiated on that very issue by the Tánaiste's predecessors and the Department of Education and Science. Many of the issues in that report are intermingled with those we are discussing today.

I wish to enunciate two fundamental principles at the start of this debate, which are enshrined in Article 42 of our Constitution. First, parents are the kings in Irish education. The idea that the parent is the natural educator of their child is a fundamental constitutional prerequisite which we should all hold dear, and which remains within our Constitution. Any deviation from that view is false and wrong. If Catholic parents wish to send their children to Catholic schools, this State has an obligation and right to support that choice. If Protestant parents wish to send their children to Protestant schools, this State also has an obligation and a right to defend that. Equally, if parents who have no religious denomination choose to send their children to non-denominational or even interdenominational schools, Members have an obligation to support that right. This constitutes a starting point for me.

However, the other starting point is that difference is a good thing within Irish education. The fact that we have different schools within primary and post-primary education is a matter for celebration and is a positive feature of the Irish education system. If one goes back to the first foundation point for national school education, namely, the famous Stanley letters of the 1830s from the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the underlying idea was the concept of difference and choice. It is a fundamental part of this debate.

In addition, ideology has no part of this debate either. People do not want schools to be turned into an ideologically obsessed schooling system. As for this debate, ideology should be left at the doorstep and the debate should be open and honest.

It is important to recognise the extraordinary contribution made by the churches and by the Catholic Church in particular to Irish education over the years. When this State had neither the will nor the finances to support Irish education, the Catholic Church was doing so free gratis. I also wish to acknowledge that most of the heavy lifting in respect of welcoming newcomer children to Ireland has been done by Irish Catholic schools. This point has not been recognised in much of the commentary on this issue.

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