The State must take over management of schools and stop “copping out” of its responsibilities in education, Government chief whip Pat Carey has said in the context of the continuing fallout from the Ryan report.
Speaking to The Irish Timeslast night, Mr Carey said there was now "an opportunity to explore how the State can take on its responsibilities for delivering an educational system".
He said he was was thinking principally of primary education, and of all the denominations running schools in that sector. At second level he felt there may be difficulties as many schools in that sector are run by trusts. Speaking as someone who taught at primary level for 30 years, he believed the State had been “copping out” of its responsibility in education and that “though [financially] this might not be the time to do it, there is never a good time”.
He also said he didn’t have a problem with parents who preferred a denominational education, but he believed that a model ought to be developed which was more suited to the current Irish situation where diversity was concerned.
Ways must be found “of transferring schools to a State system”, he said. He referred positively to comments last week by Ruairí Quinn, Labour party spokesman on education, who called on the 18 religious congregations cited in the Ryan report voluntarily to transfer their schools to the State.
Mr Quinn estimated the congregations owned up to 1,000 primary schools and said the transfer of the congregation’s schools to the State would be an opportunity for them to make a substantial further contribution to the redress scheme as he doubted they had substantial amounts of cash.
Mr Carey said redress contributions from the 18 congregations “has to be 50:50” and that, though this may present difficulties for some of them, they should be able to do so as they had in the US and Canada.
A Government spokesman said last night that Mr Carey was speaking personally and that the Government did not propose to discuss details of its position before beginning negotiations with relevant parties this week.
Meanwhile, the former Cori secretary general Sr Elizabeth Maxwell, who took part in negotiations leading to the controversial 2002 agreement, told The Irish Times yesterday she had “a totally open mind” on the 50:50 contribution suggestion. She was waiting to see what the Taoiseach proposes when he meets the 18 congregations next Thursday.
She also said, “I fully accept religious congregations will not be involved in child care (in Ireland) in future”.