A constitutional action aimed at compelling the Department of Education to fund a school in Co Clare based on the Steiner method of education has concluded at the High Court.
At the close of the 20-day hearing yesterday, Ms Justice Laffoy said she was reserving judgment.
The action, against the Minister for Education, Ireland and the Attorney General, was taken by Ms Nora O'Shiel, a pupil at Cooleenbridge School, Tuamgraney, Co Clare, suing through her mother, Mrs Margaret Boyle O'Shiel; by other pupils at the school and the parents of those pupils; and by Cooleenbridge Ltd, owner and manager of the school.
The Cooleenbridge school operates on the basis of the Waldorf-Steiner method of education and was established in 1986. It currently has more than 100 pupils. The plaintiffs argue that the Cooleenbridge school provides primary education and, therefore, the State is constitutionally obliged to fund it.
The State contends that the Constitution obliges the State to make provision "for" primary education and that the State has met this obligation through the recognition and funding of some 3,200 national schools and nine model schools across the State.
The State accepts that parents have a right to choose the form of education their children should receive but disputes the claim that it is obliged to fund any form of education chosen.
It claims the teachers at the Cooleenbridge school, apart from one, do not possess the required teaching qualifications and also argues there is inadequate provision for the teaching of Irish.
The hearing opened last November and the judge has heard evidence from some 30 witnesses, including experts on the Steiner method of education, parents of children attending the school and teachers employed there. The State called a number of expert witnesses, including inspectors working for the Department of Education.
In his closing submissions yesterday Mr Bill Shipsey SC, for the State, said the national school curriculum had been revised since 1937 to ensure children attending schools funded by the State were not getting an inferior education.
Mr Shipsey said the Steiner system was based on the teachings of one man. "Enlightened though he may be", it would be "extremely dangerous" for the State to decide there could be funding for a particular pedagogy which made a virtue of being based on the teaching of one man who died in 1925, and did not take account of developments since then.
It could not be argued that Article 42.4 of the Constitution, which obliges the State to provide for free primary education, obliged the State to make arrangements for whatever anyone wanted in relation to education.
It was entirely reasonable for the State, which was putting so much money into the education system, to seek to feel satisfied with the quality of it.
Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC, for the plaintiffs, said the parents had chosen a pedagogy and were entitled to have teachers trained in that pedagogy. All his clients required the State to do was to make the same provision as it did for all other children. He said the Constitution stipulated that the State should not oblige parents to send their children to schools established by the State.
It was his case that the constitutional principles had been breached by the refusal to fund the Cooleenbridge school.
