Oireachtas committee: Parents who want their children educated in multi-denominational schools felt a sense of outrage, anger, bewilderment and betrayal that they faced so many obstacles, an Oireachtas committee was told yesterday.
A call for a complete rethink of Department of Education procedures was made by Mr Paul Rowe, CEO of Educate Together, a registered charity, at the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Science.
Educate Together schools were obliged to respect and actively support the social, cultural and religious identity of all children, he said. It received €38,500 per annum from the State.
Mr Rowe said 99 per cent of national schools were denominational. The State was funding and supporting an overwhelming monopoly.
The mechanism for the creation of a new school was inadequate and basically flawed. It was unplanned and under-resourced, and depended entirely on local voluntary initiative.
"The central failure is that it depends utterly upon the ability of a voluntary group of parents to source suitable temporary accommodation," he said.
Of the 28 schools operated by Educate Together in the State 15 remained in temporary accommodation, and the average time taken to access a permanent building was 10 years.
This year the viable demand for six new Educate Together schools had been recognised by the New Schools Advisory Committee. However, the Minister had approved these schools only on condition that they could provide accommodation themselves. "A significant number will be unable to do so, and as a result the constitutional rights of the parents and children concerned will be violated.
"It would be remiss of me not to convey to you the sense of outrage, anger, bewilderment and betrayal that people placed in such a situation feel," he said.
Mr Rowe said they had a programme of comparative religious education which embraced all aspects of identity and celebrated main faith festivals.
Ms Jane McCarthy, development officer, said it cost from €30,000 and €40,000 to actively set up a school, and so the parents had to pay that sum. This also made it difficult to establish a school in a disadvantaged area.
"There is a feeling of anger out there at what is perceived as unfairness because they are exercising their constitutional right to choose," she said.
Mr Rowe said they proposed that the State should create a national network of schools that operated under a legal charter guaranteeing that the identity of all children was respected, irrespective of their social, cultural or religious backgrounds.
This network should be in schools owned by the State, developed in the context of the National Development Plan and protected by ring-fenced funding.