Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The pace of divestment of schools has slowed down in recent years, in my view, because the Government has decided to take a conflictual approach, with a great deal of conflictual rhetoric, rather than co-operation which was achieving quite a lot previously. The last initiative to dramatically change the dynamic of school formation was a decision I took myself in the late 1990s to eliminate the local contribution which was necessary when trying to build a new school. That was a big barrier to Educate Together schools, especially, in Dublin and other cities, in affording land prices and so on. Educate Together has always instanced that as a significant milestone in enabling it to build new schools.

It is now seven years since the Government, of which the Taoiseach was a member, announced that 1,500 schools were to change patronage beginning in January 2012. It is also seven years since that same Government convened a commission on school patronage. By any measure, there has been a failure to deliver on the revolutionary rhetoric and very little has been achieved on this front. This is causing frustration in many areas. Many schools are concerned about uncertainty and in the one or two examples where divestment happened, the changeover has not been that effective as some Educate Together schools are now reporting to CEIST or some other body. That jars with what ought to be the case. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Diarmuid Martin, has said again that he believes the majority of schools under his patronage should be divested. Has anything been done to take him up on that?

The wider issue of religion in education has evolved over time. From the late 1990s, we took a view of plurality of education provision. We signed deeds of trust that covered religious and non-religious schools, such as Gaelscoileanna, which all had different patrons. That was the approach that we took. It needs to be evolved further. The raison d'être is education. The religious became involved in education considerably earlier than the State became directly involved, particularly in second level provision. Historically, that evolution has been ongoing and the capacity of the religious to sustain it into the future, in governance, management and so on, is a big issue.

It is more pressing in the area of health. This is something I raised more than a year ago.

It seems the capacity of the religious orders to sustain their governance of major hospitals such as the Mater and St. Vincent's is highly questionable. The idea that this governance will be vested in lay trusteeships and small groups of people whom no one knows and who are not accountable to anyone is not on-----

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