The Government has a remarkable opportunity to ensure that our education system respects the rights of all, argues Paul Rowe in a plea for more support for the organisation championing multidenominational schools.
A few days ago, the Government published a survey of school needs along the N4 corridor which proposed seven new schools. This report did not cover the capital's areas of fastest housing growth and it is no secret within education circles that there could be as many as 50 new primary schools required in greater Dublin in the next 10 years.
Earlier this summer we read that Dublin's population will soon grow to two million and that our economic prosperity will dictate that a significant number of this increased population will be diverse in cultural and religious backgrounds.
These trends are being mirrored in all urban centres throughout the Republic. As a result, it is inevitable and socially desirable that the majority of the new schools built should be run with the same transparent management structure and legal guarantees of equality and respect as are provided in the Educate Together model of multi-denominational school.
Next week four new Educate Together primary schools will open, pushing up the total number of such schools in the Republic to 39.
Against this background, it is remarkable that the Government seems prepared to deny the Educate Together organisation the financial support it needs to maintain the small team of professional development workers which has been successfully helping communities found such schools.
This team has been working well in partnership with local and central government and has been instrumental in pushing forward much needed reform in Government policy in this area. There appears to be an inability to take timely policy decisions to protect the progress made.
Three major proposals for funding have been presented to the Department of Education and Science. These are under discussion but to date only token decisions have been made.
This lack of courage in decision-making is likely to prove costly both for Government and the local communities involved.
For instance, Educate Together has taken three years to build up its development office. If it is forced to dismantle this team over the next six months, it will leave Government with no experienced partners to come to its assistance to set up the many inclusive, State-owned, multidenominational schools that it will need.
The process of rebuilding such a unit will create a further three-year delay in the efficient delivery of services.
In the context of a €7 billion education budget, the amounts sought are not significant and the organisation has an excellent track record. In the past four years it has opened 18 schools on a total budget of €1.5 million
The Government may argue that history and embedded educational policy are to blame - but it has to act.
Our future social harmony demands that all families, irrespective of their religious background, must have equality in education.
Our own history of unresolved sectarian division should be argument enough. Ongoing world conflict and recent horrific events illustrate the urgent need for understanding between religions and different cultures. The foundation for such understanding can best be built in the home and in the primary school experience.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of growing religious diversity in Ireland, our primary education system remains largely monolithic. Ninety-eight per cent of all schools are obliged in law to promote the religious outlook of single religious denominations. This would not be an issue if all families had an equal choice of schools under secular management in which all faiths had equality.
In our education system, it is lawful for religious schools to discriminate on religious grounds and this discrimination may take place in enrolment and employment. Ninety-eight per cent of schools are privately owned religious institutions whose patrons have absolute privilege to lay down the religious ethos of the school, to have their exclusive curriculum taught and to exercise ultimate veto over the appointment of paid and voluntary staff.
The reality is that parents and children of differing religious views only have a space in a denominational school on the basis of tolerance and accommodation. Critically, they have no place in the exercise of the central power of the patron.
Even the constitutional right to absent children from religious instruction that conflicts with a family's belief depends on the making of an application to the school for this purpose.
Many parents find it difficult to make this decision as their child can be seen as an outsider and segregated from the rest of their classmates. Such arrangements are unfair and unequal.
So far, the State has absolved itself from this human rights issue. Our Government operates from the premise that as all schools now admit children of many different races, religions and cultures, there is no need to address the issues of exclusion, structure, choice, religious freedom and legal rights.
The publication of inter-cultural guidelines for primary schools earlier this year is a case in point. The booklet provides excellent examples in all curriculum areas except that of religion - the one that really matters, and one in which schools can legally discriminate, resulting possibly in a child's legal isolation. This is a serious omission.
Unequal arrangements for religious difference have been shown over and over to be divisive and dangerous. They cut right to the core of the self-image of a person and their family in such a way that has become an active ingredient of divisions and hatred all over the world.
The problem is the lack of school choice. In 98 per cent of cases families do not have any option but to send their children to a school that promotes one religious persuasion. It is this lack of choice that creates a situation in which rights are denied.
It was on this issue that the Committee of the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed serious concern in January. Drawing on the experience of religious division in many countries of the world, it made a friendly recommendation to the Irish government that it should promote the availability of "non-denominational and multidenominational education" and to outlaw religious discrimination in enrolment policies.
The Government appears to be disregarding this advice and suggesting that it cannot provide immediate, realistic levels of support for Educate Together - the one educational body promoting such primary schools in Ireland.
Such lack of vision to ensure that our education system develops in accordance with the needs of 21st century Ireland will tarnish the reputation of this administration for years to come. The Department of Education and Science has a remarkable opportunity to support the work of the multidenominational education sector and ensure that our education system respects the rights of all.
Paul Rowe is chief executive of Educate Together, the national organisation for multidenominational schools