Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The programme for Government commits to ensuring we develop an education system that serves everybody, whatever religion they are or if they have no religion whatsoever, and that commits to advancing the divestment programme. As we know, currently 90% of schools are in the hands of the Catholic Church. The schools run with their ethos, which is hardly appropriate for a country that is increasingly more religiously diverse and where indeed there are people who have no religion. Nor, for that matter, is it a great advertisement to people up North, if we are serious about having a united Ireland that breaks from the religious sectarianism of the past.

The latest evidence that the divestment programme is not going very well was seen in Raheny, where there were discussions for the reconfiguration of three Catholic schools, and it has run into serious trouble. It is not the first example of this, which points to the fact that the whole process of consultation is not working. While I can only read the reports, it is not the first time I have heard of this sort of thing. We do not have anybody who is really selling the benefits of divestment. There is also a concern among school communities and staff that in reconfiguration, school communities will lose out in terms of facilities and what is available for children etc.

As well as this, because the whole process is being designed between the Church and the State, there are certain people who do not really want to change the status quo and who are scaremongering about what the consequences of divestment might be, such as new patronage, reconfiguration etc. Raheny and other examples suggest that we have to look at the whole process of consultation again. We need to sell the benefits of divestment and of having a more secular education system. We need to ensure it is seen as a win for school communities in terms of the facilities that will be available and not as a possible threat to those school communities in terms of facilities, school buildings, sports facilities, or whatever it might be.

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