WorldView:'I would be very happy to see a plurality of patronage and providers of education. I have no ambition to run the entire education system in Dublin." The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, mounted a spirited defence of the Catholic Church's record this week following the crisis of access to Catholic schools in north and west Dublin for children of immigrant families. In a poignant observation one parent attending a protest meeting in Balbriggan asked: "Where are the Irish? . . . I don't know how it's going to be, but it's going to be quite difficult having just black people in your class," writes Paul Gillespie
Dr Martin's remarks highlight the distinctive nature of the Irish educational system, in which the State has delegated control of education to his and other churches. It is worth comparing our experience with other models of church-state relations in Europe. This reveals we are undergoing a process of change similar to elsewhere involving a new form of pluralism, rather than a transition to the strict separation of church and state traditionally posited by secular systems of state neutrality.
An Italian specialist in the changing relations between churches and education in Europe, Alessandro Ferrari, argues that states with a nation-state identity like Italy and Ireland, in which social cohesion was traditionally entrusted to a cultural-religious homogeneity, have made little or no separation between state and private schools, both being involved in defining common citizenship on the basis of state funding and a common curriculum.
There are many variations within this tradition, including more pluralistic ones from Belgium and the Netherlands, reflecting the greater number of Christian churches there. Other states have confessional models based on established churches, as in England and Sweden, or the concordatarian ones in Germany, Italy and Spain, in which the state reaches specific agreements with individual churches to provide education. Sweden, Austria and Portugal have recently changed their laws on state and church.
In contrast, countries like France with a state-nation identity have aimed to achieve social cohesion through a common bond of citizenship based on public institutions, including state schools. French laïcité is based on a strict separation of church and state and the assumed privatisation of religious belief outside the public sphere.
Despite the appeal and reputation of this model, it has not in fact been applied much in other European states, each of which has tended to find its own particular agreement between church and state on education. Ferrari refers to a growing trend towards a "Catho-laïcité" in France, hidden behind a theoretically neutral concept of secularism, in which about 20 per cent of pupils attend Catholic schools which have state recognition and funding.
As the educational system evolves here we should not assume the only alternative to our underdeveloped church delegation model, which ceded the running of schools overwhelmingly to churches, is the French one of complete separation. That tends to be the presumption of political debate - and indeed there is a vigorous anti-clerical civic republican tradition here that makes this case.
But it is unrealistic, since the actually existing system has evolved towards a new pluralism in which the State manages the system based on common norms. As the Catholic Church has steadily lost its previous monolithic cultural predominance and other traditions have become more assertive with the demand for multi-denominational and integrated education growing, it becomes more urgent to see a new model negotiated better reflecting the new balance of public and private involvement.
This is all the more important considering the educational system's role in providing for the wider cohesion required to cater for immigrant communities with different cultural and religious traditions.
The long battle throughout Europe to separate the religious and public spheres had certain common threads, despite the very different ways in which mutual accommodations were reached. In return for assurances that the churches had abandoned ambitions to control the political sphere and were willing to encourage national identification and loyalty, states reached various agreements with them.
In this sense religions were "nationalised" on the basis that they would endorse multiple identities between the religious and political spheres. But Ferrari points out that these compacts tend to break down or require adaptation when confronted with new religions such as Islam or new evangelical movements which insist on running their own private schools.
These newcomers cannot be trusted to encourage the established systems of multiple identities because they do not fit into the existing systems of twin tolerance between states and churches, based on mutual respect, recognition, autonomy and dialogue.
So a new round of negotiation is required if immigrant cultures and religions are to adapt. There is a convergence of experience throughout the EU on these issues, which merits more awareness and debate as the Irish model is also adapted. It would be a cruel irony if existing restrictions on school recruitment and access were to be reinforced in response to immigration, as in certain areas of Dublin under pressure from exploding demand for school places.
This would feed into an under-reported but growing racism from parts of the existing underclass in response to immigration, which will increase further in an economic downturn.
Religion has become much more part of the public sphere in recent years around Europe - through immigration, Islam and the enlargement of the EU. This is a contested issue, especially from those who had become used to postwar secularisation and assumed it was here to stay.
It is an issue of tolerance rather than of separation, however. And even though the religious issue tends to define many of these debates, they are usually not about religious beliefs but how to encounter difference and otherness.
Another Italian scholar of church-state relations, Silvio Ferrari from the University of Milan, discerns a convergent passage throughout Europe, from religious to cultural-civil pluralism in the legal and constitutional treatment of these issues. Both men were speaking at a conference on religion and democracy in Europe held at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem this week. It is necessary to find agreement on a new public role for religions capable of dealing with these changes.