A Co Meath parish priest has decided to cut the Catholic Church's contribution to four local primary schools because fewer people are practising their faith and contributing to parish funds.
In a statement to local papers last week, Father Andrew Farrell, parish priest of Trim, said the obligation to pay an annual "capitation" fee to help cover local schools' running costs was "placed on the local community, not on the local parish".
In the past, the parish had paid it in full "because the parish and the local community very much coincided. The local community was the parish where almost everybody went to Mass and contributed to the support of the parish.
"This is no longer the case. Many people have now left the household of the faith or no longer practise it and make no contribution to parish support. This means that loyal parishioners who contribute to parish support are subsidising the education of the children who no longer contribute."
The Department of Education currently gives primary schools an annual capitation grant of £60 per pupil, on condition that boards of management collect £8.50 per pupil from the local community, which usually means the local Catholic parish.
Father Farrell said the Trim parish would henceforth pay only £7 of this charge and would ask the local community, through the schools, to pay another £1.50, or the equivalent of 6p per week.
He emphasised that this was a purely voluntary contribution and no child would be excluded from school because of non-payment.
He called on people to lobby their political representatives "to have this unfair and inequitable indirect tax abolished".
"Towns across Ireland are no longer to be seen as parishes. They are population centres that contain parishes of the faithful within them.
"We understand that the total cost to the Exchequer would be somewhere in the region of £6 million, small change when we are told that there is so much money available to the Minister for Finance."
Father Farrell said yesterday that many newer residents of the parish, including people from Dublin, "never come near us at all and are, therefore, making no contribution to the parish".
He said the "local contribution" had been "a sensible arrangement in the times when the parish and the community were one, but it is now obsolete".
It is known that there is concern about this issue in senior church circles. Last year Catholic education representatives indicated, in the context of discussions with the Department of Education about increasing the capitation fee, that they might have to consider collecting it at school rather than church level.
There is also some concern that more priests might follow Father Farrell's example, especially in urban areas where Mass attendance has declined most sharply in recent years.
Mr Jim Cantwell, of the Catholic Press Office, said there was no general church policy on how the local contribution was paid; the decision was up to each diocese. However, official church sources admitted that the situation in Trim "points up the difficulty" of raising money when there were fewer people going to Mass, and with a disproportionate burden falling on those who do go.
Ms Sheila Murphy, chairwoman of one of the Trim schools' parents' associations, speaking in a personal capacity, said the local contribution was an unfair burden on the church and the Government should pay the entire capitation fee.