A speaker at the synod of the combined Church of Ireland dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough said last night he did not accept that Protestant schools should be made to suffer cutbacks "because of specious claims that the schools in our sector are not serving the disadvantaged".
Rev Robert Whiteside, chaplain to Kings Hospital school in Dublin, challenged "the perception that our secondary schools cater only for the elite". It did not stand up to scrutiny, he said.
"Some 11 per cent of children in our schools come from situations where there is unemployment, long-term illness of a parent or where there is a single parent. A further 24 per cent come from homes where there is measurable evidence of economic an social disadvantage. Our schools seek to serve every family in our community and many go to considerable lengths to make special arrangements to continue educating families who have fallen on hard times."
Referring to "all sorts of wild rumours" during the summer about schools in the Protestant sector, he said: "On at least one occasion, the Minister himself gave the impression that part of his campaign to reduce the imbalance in educational opportunity between the better-off and those from disadvantaged backgrounds would involve the targeting of fee-paying schools, 21 of which belong to the Protestant sector."
Happily, he added, the Minister had in recent weeks gone out of his way "to reassure the Protestant community that these rumours were without foundation".
Any attempt to remove the funding of teachers' salaries or capital grants from the schools would have "the disastrous effect of pushing fees so high as to be out of the reach of all but the very highest earners. It is true some schools' fees are already high but frequently the amount is substantially reduced by grants and bursaries," he said.
On the issue of asylum-seekers, Mr Terence Reid of Glenageary protested at xenophobia in Irish society and among gardaí. He said he had spent five hours in a District Court yesterday, accompanying two Africans. The judge dismissed both cases even before the prosecution outlined why both people were in court. Emphasising he was not pursuing political correctness in the matter, he appealed just for justice.
Ms Vivienne Darling called for church members to "tackle the prevailing ageist attitudes in our society".
She recalled a road sign in the UK, found near facilities for older people, which featured "two bent figures with sticks".
To her it was "an example of how older people are viewed in general. The elderly themselves can so easily respond by conforming to this stereotype, she said.
