The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev John Neill, has appealed to the Minister for Education for capital funding for the church's secondary schools in the Republic.
Speaking at the General Synod in Dublin yesterday, he said he was "very concerned that not one of our schools appears on the (Department of Education's) capital projects list for this year".
He appealed to the Minister "not to do anything to undermine this key feature of education for the minority in the Republic".
"Please ensure that our schools can continue to provide education for the community for which they were established," he said.
He felt there might be a perception that the schools, and the parents who sent children to them, were wealthy. The fact was that the great majority of children attending them were grant-aided, he said.
He did not believe that the omission of the Church of Ireland schools from the capital projects list was "conscious discrimination". More likely the reasons for such funding of Protestant schools had been overlooked, he said.
Canon John McCullagh said there was a similar problem in the church's primary schools. He instanced a school in Newcastle, Co Wicklow, where children were being taught on a stage. It was now 10 years since the school applied for an extra classroom, he said.
Archbishop Neill also said the church was "very opposed" to a proposal that the College of Education in Dublin amalgamate with other colleges. It was felt the college and its ethos would be subsumed by such an arrangement. However, they would certainly explore another college or colleges coming onto the College of Education campus, and supported the idea of co-operation with other colleges, he said.
He disagreed that denominational education was coming to an end in Ireland, and pointed to what was happening in older secular societies in Europe, particularly the Nordic countries, where parents were looking for schooling with a values system. "And they are looking to the churches for that," he said.
In a debate on church unity, Rev Dr Michael Kennedy said the recent papal encyclical on the Eucharist was such a significant document it warranted a considered response from the church.
He felt church leaders had been "curiously silent" since it was published on Holy Thursday. "There does need to be tough love in our relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. We need to be prepared to be constructively critical," he said.