Some fee-paying schools are indicating that they would prefer to return to the free education system, the Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin said this morning.
He said he had heard this from people in the educational community. “I’ve heard of some fee-paying schools which would prefer now to go back into the normal system and you know there isn’t great enthusiasm either from a financial point of view as to the State covering the fees that were paid by those schools,” he said.
There are 56 fee-paying second-level schools in the State of which 21 are Protestant, two inter-denominational, one Jewish and the rest Catholic. Some five per cent of Catholic schools are fee-paying.
Dr Martin said it was important to remember that there were non-fee paying Catholic schools of the “very highest quality which really shows that you can provide quality education...so it’s possible to combine both.”
A spokesman for the Department of Education said the department had not received applications by any school to join the free education scheme recently. One school made inquiries in 2004 but subsequently withdrew its application.
The issue arose as Dr Martin addressed a conference organised to mark Catholic Schools Week. Events have been organised in schools around the country to mark the week which concludes on Sunday with a special televised Mass in Lucan, Co Dublin.
