Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 19:

In page 26, lines 30 to 37, to delete all words from and including "of—" in line 30 down to and including line 37 and substitute the following:"of a sibling of the student concerned attending or having attended the school.".

This section of the Bill has been dubbed "the Clongowes section", which is probably accurate. It states: "...a parent or grandparent of the student concerned having previously attended the school, provided the maximum number of places filled pursuant to that criterion does not exceed 25 per cent of the available places as set out in the school’s annual admission notice for the school year concerned. This has no place in this Bill. I have spoken on this several times. The Minister knows my reasoning for this stance. This is an elitist provision, which has no place in this Bill. It has no place in a Bill proposed by anybody who genuinely believes in a republic. There is no reason to give more than 25% of the places in a school to children or grandchildren of past pupils. This would be odious enough if it referred only to children of past pupils, but the provision for grandchildren puts the cherry on the cake.

Only one section of the education system is looking for this. The Minister and I know who they are. The private fee-paying school lobby are the only people who are looking for this. These are the ones who have advocated for this, and I will state the reason. People are afraid to say it because they are so powerful, they have so much influence and so many members of Cabinet are past pupils of theirs, so they have an open door. The reason is that they want to keep the royal bloodline going to their schools - the old ties network. They tend to be old boys. The Minister might as well have inserted "sons and grandsons". It would have exactly the same affect. I refer to the old boys' network, those who hang around, stay in touch with each other as business colleagues and on golf courses or kick around the corridors of power together. This lobby wants to ensure that its schools have this royal line of succession so that the children and grandchildren of past pupils will have a certain section roped off for themselves and will be allowed access to the school.

We talk about equality. We have all mentioned equality this afternoon in reference to provision for Irish language speakers, Travellers, etc. How is somebody whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother did not attend secondary school supposed to have the same access to a school on that basis? Let us consider a Traveller child whose father or mother did not go to second level school. If a child is not from the local area, their father or mother will not have attended the local second level school.If a child is not from this country, clearly his or her father or mother did not go to the local second level school. If a child is from an area of acute disadvantage, it is more likely that his or her father or mother did not go to a second level school and it is extremely likely that the child's grandparents did not go to a second level school. Let us be honest. The only reason this provision exists is because of the powerful lobbying of a section of the education sector, which is fee-paying, exclusive and elitist. They want that exclusivity and elitism in legislation and they will get their way. I do not really expect much more from the Fine Gael Party but the Fianna Fáil Party is going to support it anyway. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael together will support this section of the Bill, which gives more rights to children and grandchildren of past pupils. It is odious, elitist and wrong.

I know the Minister will say that previously there was no cap and he has put one in place. That is not the point. There is much good stuff in this Bill and the Labour Party completely accepts that the Constitution puts constraints on what can be done with the baptism barrier. We are not going to play political football with that at all. We will not support amendments that ask the Minister to do more than he can because of constraints in the Constitution about religious ethos etc. We know the Bill goes further than many people would have imagined it could have gone in that regard. However, there is no need for this provision at all. My colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, believed this should be at a zero level. Senators should not go far as I will be calling a vote on this. The compromise was meant to be 10% but that did not get through the Cabinet in the previous Government. The Bill did not get past Cabinet in the previous Government because of this section.

People want this section to go through without any pointing to it or mention that this section of Irish society has so much influence in this Republic that the political system, over and over again, will bend over backwards for them. They want school ties written into legislation, which is disgusting. This elitism has ruined the country and gives every young person who does not come from that background the idea that life just is not fair and those people do not really play by the same rules. We are writing that into legislation as unless a pupil's father or grandfather went to the school, for example, there is not the same right of access.

I will make a suggestion to the Minister but he will not do it. He should scrap this by agreeing to our amendment and saying it is right. He will not do it. Fianna Fáil is the so-called republican party but if it supports the Government on this, it should not speak about equality in education in this Chamber or the other Chamber ever again. This provision puts Travellers, migrants and poor children at a disadvantage and it is being put in legislation. This is supposed to be a republic. I know what the Minister will say as he has already said it twice. We just have to go with it. Before coming to this House I heard rumours of the influence of elitist groups in Irish society on members of the Cabinet and politicians in this place but I did not really believe it. It is now written in front of me and we will pass it into law.