Figures Came From Report For Bishops On Primary Schools
THE BASIS for a projected 50-60 per cent reduction in Catholic schools provision, mentioned in a speech by the Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe last Friday, was a document prepared on behalf of the Catholic bishops.
The document, Factors Determining School Choice: Report on a Survey of the Attitudes of Parents of Children attending Catholic Primary Schools in Ireland, was published in April 2008 by the Irish Bishops Conference, a spokesman for the Minister said yesterday.
The document, by Eoin O’Mahony, was compiled for the Commission for Education of the Irish Bishops Conference, the spokesman said.
He was responding to comments in Maynooth last Monday by the chairman of the Bishops Commission for Education, Bishop Leo O’Reilly.
He expressed surprise at a speech given by Mr O’Keeffe last Friday to the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association in Dublin in which he said his department “will shortly be providing an initial list of about 10 urban areas that can be used to test the concept of reducing the number of Catholic schools”.
He also spoke of an eventual reduction of Catholic schools provision in demographically stable urban areas to 60 per cent.
On Monday Bishop O’Reilly said: “I don’t know where that came from” and that he felt such a figure “would vary greatly between the city and the country”.
Yesterday the Minister’s spokesman pointed out that the figures came from a foreword by Bishop O’Reilly to the O’Mahony document referred to.
In the two-page foreword, Bishop O’Reilly says: “It is satisfying to learn that 63 per cent of respondents believe that the churches should continue to have a prominent role in the provision of primary schooling. Somewhat fewer, namely 48 per cent of the respondents, would choose a school under the management of a religious denomination.” The survey was in Catholic schools on the island, north and south.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Bishop O’Reilly did allude in passing to this document as a possible source for the Minister’s figures. He also said that last November, at a meeting in Dublin with the bishops, the Minister and his officials agreed the department would undertake research on areas where a reduction in the number of Catholic schools could be tested, and would then get back to the bishops. “They didn’t do so . . . it came as a bit of a surprise, in that sense,” he said.
