TALKS ARE under way between the sides in a High Court challenge by four private Protestant schools to a State teachers’ redeployment scheme which the schools claim adversely affects their rights to select teachers.
The case has been adjourned until today following an application yesterday by Gerard Hogan SC, for the schools, for more time for the discussions to take place. The talks had continued throughout the day yesterday.
The action is by four Dublin secondary schools who say the redeployment scheme introduced last year by the Minister for Education interferes with their autonomy and the rights of parents to have their children educated according to their religious faith.
The action has been brought by St Andrew’s, Booterstown, a co-educational, multidenominational, Presbyterian-founded school; Rathdown Girls School, Glenageary, one of only two all-girls Church of Ireland boarding schools in the State; Wesley College, the State’s only Methodist second-level school, based in Ballinteer; and St Patrick’s Cathedral Grammar School, the only remaining Protestant secondary school in Dublin city centre.
They are seeking declarations that the Minister has breached their constitutional rights by requiring them to accept teachers under a redeployment scheme which was set up because of the closure of a number of other schools in Dublin where local populations were declining.
They are also seeking orders directing the Minister to cease operation of the scheme, to pay salaries to teachers whom they appointed outside of the scheme, and damages.
The Minister says the schools have to prove their denominational nature and ethos with regard to the selection and recruitment of teachers. The Minister also says the question of how to deal with surplus teachers was agreed with the social partners, including teacher unions and school managerial authorities, as part of the national agreement Towards 2016.
The case opened on Tuesday and was due to resume yesterday, but following talks, Mr Hogan asked the judge to further adjourn the matter until today. Mr Justice Bryan McMahon agreed to do so.
The schools claim the redeployment scheme was introduced last year without consultation or agreement with them. They say they are among only 23 schools in the State run under the Protestant ethos and they “never accepted” the redeployment scheme. Mr Hogan said the representative body for the majority Catholic schools had agreed to the scheme “under duress”.
The scheme is implemented by a director of redeployment who has power to unilaterally assign a teacher and whose decisions are binding on all parties.