Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I thank the Minister for facilitating opening of this discussion. I have had the honour and privilege of being a Minister of State in one Department and a Minister in four others. My experience in shadowing the Department of Education and Skills, as it is now, is one that leads me to be believe the Department is malevolently dysfunctional. I cite as a recent example that the Minister was just about to sit down when her speech, which was probably written between Friday and Tuesday of this week, was delivered to us. It is a discourtesy to this House that is consistent with the behaviour of the Department of Education and Skills when appearing before the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Science. The Minister may recall that I made that point to her at the committee. This practice must change because there are wonderful people in the Department of Education and Skills but the collective is dysfunctional.

This debate on patronage is ideological, it is important and it must be addressed in terms of the 21st century but we must not lose sight of the day job: to ensure that our children, who only grow up once, do not become victims of an ideological debate conducted by adults who have long since had the benefit of emerging from the education system and who are pursuing different agendas in their adult life. We have seen the victims of that in Britain, where the ideological debate has got in the way of the delivery of quality education in the classroom.

I look forward to parsing and analysing the Minister's speech. It contained some interesting observations. There is a view expressed by some people that the Labour Party is statist in its activities in the delivery of certain services that are essential in a modern society. In education, however, we are not statist, we fully support Article 42 of the Constitution in all its ramifications, and recognise the family as the primary centre of education and the right of parents to choose. We fully support the Constitution in that the State should provide for primary education but not necessarily provide primary education.

The history of the configuration of patronage is a history with which we are all familiar; the Tánaiste will be acutely familiar with that divided community in Donegal. All of us would have liked for the Stanley letter to have been upheld and for faith formation to have occurred after school hours within the framework of the buildings but all three religious communities, Catholic, Church of Ireland and Presbyterian, demanded that education be denominational and we have inherited that system. There were great strides in the new curriculum in primary education introduced in 1971. That new curriculum, however, effectively makes the Constitution incapable of delivering and vindicating the right of parents because faith formation is now an integral part of the entire day's work, rather than the old style, where a half hour was set aside for religious formation. We have problems in this that will require a long dialogue to come to a resolution.

A third of my constituents are not Catholics. I do not support the view that the phrases "non-Catholic", "non-national" or "non-believer" are appropriate. We are all believers, everyone has a belief system. In a republic, belief systems, no matter who or what they are, should be respected as the right of the citizen to hold. I believe in atheism; I was brought up in a Catholic household but, like all adults, I take charge of my own life and that is what I believe. I am not a "non-believer", a "non-Catholic" or a "non-national". The language that is used by the Department of Education and Skills is progressive in this area, the phrase "new comer children" is wonderfully welcoming in an area where we must be sensitive.

In my part of the Republic of Ireland, there is now a phenomenon of "compulsory Catholicism", where to get a child into a school in a built-up area where demand exceeds supply, and where previously the Catholic church was welcoming and open, and I never heard a charge of proselytising made against it, the church must ration scarce spaces and it does that by two criteria: a baptismal certificate for the child who wishes to enter the school system and a utility bill in the name of the parents indicating that they live in the community. When the White Paper on education was published in the 1990s, one of the challenges then assessed was how this State would manage the decline in primary school numbers. Last week at the Joint Committee on Education and Science, we heard how we face an explosion in numbers now. Between now and 2016, there could be a 20% increase in the school population.

Demographic predictions like this are easy to make; the children born this evening in Holles Street and the Rotunda will be eligible for primary school entrance in four years. It is impossible, however, to get a school extension through the school building unit in Tullamore in less than five years unless the school is on an emergency track. We are not capable of responding to demand. Children only grow up once, they only go through fourth class once and if they do not learn to read between third and fifth class, they immediately fall behind because for the rest of their education they are reading to learn. We must remember that.

I like the idea of a diversity of choice of patron. I do not hold a candle for any particular group. However, I like the multi-denominational nature of Educate Together. Educate Together has travelled a long path, made some mistakes and corrected earlier decisions, and has come to a conclusion whereby faith formation is provided for in its school buildings but outside school hours.

I will read the Minister's speech and come back to her on it but I will attempt to do justice to it now from memory. She stated in a rather dismissive but highly defensive way - whoever wrote the speech knew exactly what he or she was saying - that in primary schools for 80% of the time there is no distinction or segregation in the classroom, but that for a certain period of time there is segregation for faith formation. When we finally discuss the legislation to give statutory basis for the schools of which she is currently patron, where there is no parental representation, will the Minister or someone on her behalf describe to us what happens during that 20% of time in the classroom when there is segregation? How is that segregation made? I want the House - this republican assembly - to be told exactly how their children will be treated when that 20% of the time occurs, when the four categories of children are labelled, when that principle authority figure - the font of all knowledge - the school teacher, 80% or 90% of whom are women, with all the maternal characteristics that involves states to one group that they belong to the Catholic Church and that they will be taught faith formation; but to another group that it is Christian so must stay in another part of the room; to another that it is Muslim and must stay over there; and to another that they are non-believers. What message in a republic in the 21st century are we giving each other? What is a Donegal Deputy from the edge of the Border saying to the rest of us, from a part of the island ravaged by sectarian divisions?

There is a better model and that is to provide for faith formation and to facilitate parents who want it and to use the resources and to have those resources provided in the school outside school hours. That is what the Stanley letter was about; that is what the original curriculum was about; and that is what Article 42 is about, where parents have the right to send their child to the nearest school even if that is not of the ethos of their choice. Equally, within that right to go to what are predominantly Catholic schools, they have the right to ask that their child be removed from the classroom for the half an hour before break in the morning. However, this is no longer possible because of the new curriculum. I attended Catholic schools week on 28 January where I learned that religion informs the entire day's teaching; there is no 30 minute period when religion or faith formation is provided.

This is about much more than faith formation and ideology. It is about mobilising the beliefs and values of our republican Constitution to the 21st century. It is about recognising the rights of parents, as primary educators in the first instance and as people involved in exercising parental choice. In my constituency, the present system effectively excludes one third of constituents, not counting those who may nominally be Catholics but are catholics with a small "c", as Deputy Hayes stated.

We get great outcomes from our educational system, and this is a tribute to the Department of Education and Skills, the teachers, the VEC and everybody else involved. Notwithstanding our relatively low spend in the educational system we get outcomes that are above average in most areas. This is for a number of reasons, including the quality of our teachers and the educational achievements they are required to have to enter the teaching system; the commitment of all patron bodies in varied forms, and there are first division players and third division players as there are in all walks of life; the extraordinary commitment of the 20,000 volunteers who go on boards of management; the extraordinary lonely and heroic role played by principals in our primary school system, notwithstanding the onus of governance that is incessantly thrust upon them by circulars from the Department of Education and Skills; and, coming back to my first point, the commitment that parents have to education.

The Constitution was drafted in the 1930s, when Europe was preparing to tear itself apart again in a savage world war, more likely a second European civil war if the truth were known, and it reflects the landscape of the demography of this island at that time. That demography has changed. The fastest growing faith group in this country are non-believers, to contradict my earlier exhortation but to put it in language that people can understand. These are people who profess to have no religious belief. They have to be found a place in the same way as a place was found for previous cohorts of Irish citizens in this republic. That is why I endorse fully the request from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who wants help. He is the biggest patron of primary schools in the country and he wants help from us to divest in an orderly manner so that the remaining schools he has under his patronage can become fully-blown unashamedly Catholic schools. He wants our help and the Minister is refusing it.

See this speech in context