CHURCH OF Ireland members described public representatives as "immoral" and claimed the Government had breached its agreement with Protestant fee-paying secondary schools, in a debate last night.
It was also said that the current application of child protection procedures was making it very difficult to get adult volunteers to supervise children.
Commenting on the Budget at the diocesan synod of Dublin and Glendalough Rev Norman Gamble, rector of Malahide, said "the immoral behaviour of our public representatives" when it came to breaking promises "as TDs have done about our schools . . . is a thundering disgrace".
He recalled how former minister for education Mary Hanafin praised Church of Ireland schools. Those were "hollow words in the face of the determination of the Department of Education to have nothing whatsoever to do with smaller schools. They want 16-, 24-teacher schools. One planned in Malahide will be a 40-teacher school. Is that what we want for our children"? he said.
He continued that he was addressing the issue "not in a denominational way, though many of our schools are small. Basically small schools are being starved".
He felt very strongly about the subject where "the whole Irish community is concerned. People want genuine choice, not what the department decides they will have".
Frances Hill of Kings Hospital school said Budget education provisions were in breach of the 1966 agreement between the State and Protestant fee-paying schools. The pupil-teacher ratio at fee-paying secondary schools is to be raised to 20:1.
She felt "great concern at comments by Mr O'Keeffe [the Minister for Education] that the different treatment of fee-paying schools was 'symbolic'. I feel threatened by that - that further distinctions may follow."
It was "totally unacceptable that these unilateral changes can be made and it requires an urgent response from our church at the highest level," she said.
Earlier in the debate Rev Gillian Wharton, rector of Booterstown, complained about anomalies in child protection guidelines which were making it increasingly difficult to get adults involved in the supervision of children.
Emphasising her unequivocal commitment to child protection, she said adults who agreed to volunteer for supervisory activity had to go through a lengthy four-stage process of clearance. It was also the case that lay members of parish child protection panels could not be allowed in such supervisory roles, though clergy members could, and that only lay volunteers who came forward to supervise after 2006 had to be vetted.
