Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House and to thank him for his ongoing and thoughtful commitment to debating education issues in the Seanad. I would take a critical view of the report, although I agree with many of its points. I support much of what the report has to say about the divestment process. This is an issue on which everyone is agreed that there needs to be divesting of schools in order to facilitate greater diversity. In many ways we are discussing a system which, in my view, is to a large extent not broken. If one is to look at the issues that really affect education in Ireland, there is no running sore here among a large section of the community. People are concerned about what is at times a predatory points system, pressure on the curriculum, the needs of children with special needs and how those needs are catered for. Those are the main issues in Irish education. It is true there are people who want to see greater diversity in the provision of primary schooling and they are right in this view. There are people who chafe at what they perceive as excessive denominational religious influence on the schools to which they have chosen to send their children, perhaps in some cases because they did not have the choice to which, in my view, they were legitimately entitled.

However, where I think the report falls down is that it is imbued with a strong sense of the need to cater for those who wish to be free of any religious influence but it is somewhat tone deaf when it comes to the great majority of people who are not only content with our school system as it is but who value the very denominational spirit that imbues the school to which they have chosen to send their children. In my view the report is not sufficiently respectful of the legitimate rights of a majority in Irish society. It is a strange thing that many people will agree that there needs to be more diversity, and most reasonable people will agree with that, but what is interesting is that there is strong support for the right of parents to choose schools that reflect the particular values. This was illustrated by Senator Power when she quoted the fact that 67% of parents with dependent children want the teaching of religion to take place during the school day.

We need to acknowledge that there is a degree to which it will be impossible to reconcile everybody's precise aspirations. We need to avoid pandering excessively to extremes, whether it is the extreme view represented in the choice of a particular patron of a non-church school to exclude a person because she is pregnant, in violation of every time-honoured Judeo-Christian principle of respecting human dignity, to the minority in some cases who would resent that there would even be a crucifix on the wall of a school. They are a vocal minority in our society and it is important to respect their rights but not to pander excessively to their rights because if one does so, one will end up interfering with the rights of a greater number of people. In my view it is important that we would pay tribute to the genuine Christian ethos that permeates most schools, where minorities are respected very deeply in the current display of traditions, cultural backgrounds and different religious traditions as well. However, it must never be the case that in the name of something that is modernist and pluralist, people who have deep views about the meaning of human life would be deprived of access to schools which would reflect those views. The surveys show that three quarters of the population want to see the diversity of schools, including church-run schools, and that they would continue to exist. I would be concerned that if we overdo it on the dilution of what is on offer in what are called the stand-alone schools, that in a sense we make a mockery or could end up making a mockery of the important debate which needs to take place about the divesting of schools.

We need to move to a world that is more pluralist but it needs to be a world where the cherished traditions of a majority continue to be respected and in very real ways so that we do not have dumbing down so that a kind of disinterested neutralism does not become the dominant ethos of our schools. This in itself is a value statement.

We must remember the parents in Ashbourne who want to send their children to Catholic schools and who feel they are being pushed in the direction of an Educate Together school. The choices of those parents are as entitled to respect - I am sure the Minister agrees with me - as the choice of parents in Portobello who want access to non-Catholic schools. This is the neutrality I support and I support respect for the different aspirations of different sections of the community.