Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising what I believe is an important question. There is no doubt that Ireland has changed and citizens have different expectations of all Departments, but most particularly in the area of education. It is my ambition to help parents to have access to the school of their choice. As the Deputy rightly points out, over 95% of our schools are denominational, and my ambition is to deliver the commitment in the programme for Government to treble the number of schools that offer alternatives to denominational patronage. My vision for this is to have as much diversity as possible. I do not see the merit in confining our approach to a single model. That is why I have sought to accelerate all the elements of the existing strategy and to provide new schools. Last week, I provided new schools in the Deputy's neighbouring area, Cabra, and in Marino, with Educate Together as patron. We need to continue to provide new schools with new patrons. Virtually all the schools where new patrons are being appointed are multidenominational or non-denominational. The progress that is being made on the transfer of patronage, which was initiated by Deputy Ruairí Quinn and continued by Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, is something we can accelerate. I will form a working group which will sit down with the Catholic patrons to seek to accelerate that work. It is recognised as an area in which slow progress has been made, but we hope to accelerate this progress.

I do not share the Deputy's view regarding the role of the community national school. A school that is in State rather than private patronage and that offers, under one umbrella, the opportunity for faith-based instruction and makes provision for other options offers a good model that will allow us to transition. If we are moving from a situation in which more than 95% of schools are denominational we will need models that can accommodate parents with different views of the type of education their children should have, and the model of community-based national schools under the education and training boards, as a State-sponsored patron, is a good one that has potential. We have to look at it and look at the programmes that children who do not opt to be in a denomination receive. I am very open to considering how we can improve those programmes, but I do not share the Deputy's view that we should throw out a model that allows different views of education to thrive under one umbrella.

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