Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the enormous work of all religious orders, priests, nuns and brothers. Without their support over the years in finance and time this country would be at a huge loss educationally. If they were to pull out entirely, the Department of Education and Skills would not be able to educate the young, particularly at primary level. I also acknowledge the great work of lay people on boards of management, who with very little resources over the years managed and ran very successful schools and continue to do so.

I spent 35 years as a primary school teacher and know the type of subsidisation required for the maintenance of school property and general upkeep when the capitation grants, then and now, were scarcely sufficient to meet the schools' insurance and heating costs. Unfortunately today, that shortfall in school funding tends to fall on the shoulders of proactive parents' associations to meet growing school needs.

Members need to know the Equal Status Act 2000 prohibits religious discrimination in educational services. However, the Act allows oversubscribed schools to enrol coreligionists in preference. We all know of the 20% of schools, mainly in Dublin, which are oversubscribed and which have led to this huge debate. These are the most active in employing admission processes and selection criteria based on religious background. I firmly believe this is wrong.

I suggest in the interim, when we are trying to get a solution to ensure everybody, religious or not, is treated equally, that the Department of Education and Skills could, through the inspectorate, seek that all enrolment policies embrace the conditions which we all know are needed to provide equality in religion and everything else throughout the school. This would be subject to the payment of the grant, and would be acceptable in terms of ensuring there was no discrimination.

Deleting section 7(3) of the Equal Status Act in the manner proposed would endanger minority faith schools, as has already been alluded to. This is why the section was included in the Act in the first place. Fianna Fáil's view is the selection process should be based, as others have said, on catchment area. In the case of oversubscribed schools, locality and catchment would have priority to a school place.

On the issue of faith formation and religious instruction, we do not support instruction after school hours and believe it would be unconstitutional. My experience from having taught in schools with a Catholic ethos for many years is that all religions and none were always accepted. I would venture to suggest that leaving aside the sacramental issues, to which any religion is entitled, the ethos in schools and the teaching of any form of faith or ethos was based on respect, with the children respecting themselves, their community, their family and their neighbours. This permeates civic, moral and religious beliefs in all faiths. I suggest to the Minister that he could take interim action and ensure all schools have a clear policy before grants and other such items would be paid.

See this speech in context