A brave experiment to educate Protestant and Catholic pupils together in the gaelscoil in Dunboyne is now mired in conflict, reports Emmet Oliver
It is often said that there are two subjects which are certain to spoil polite dinner party conversation in Ireland - religion and politics.Although we are told that we live in a secular, apolitical world, these two subjects continue to agitate normally mild-mannered people in ways which still amaze us.
This is certainly the case in the commuter-belt town of Dunboyne in Co Meath. For the last four months, this bustling small town has played host to one of the most remarkable episodes in Irish education in recent years.
Viewed during the day, Gaelscoil Thulach na nÓg is like any other primary school. It has the same curriculum, it has a yard for children to play in at lunchtime, and several Portakabins, which have now become a regular feature of the underfunded primary sector.
But each morning when children are dropped off at school there are clear signs that things are not in their right place.
Parents ignore each other in a very public fashion; children are briskly walked to the school gates so that their mother or father can avoid a fellow parent; children enter the front door under the lights of television cameras. Sometimes they have to walk past groups of parents holding placards and shouting slogans.
It was all so different a few years ago when the school first opened. An experiment in inter-denominationalism (mixing the Catholic and Protestant faiths), it attempted to bridge the wide chasm which has existed for the last century between Catholic and Protestant primary schools.
The central idea behind the school was simple: there was more that united the two Christian faiths than divided them.
But as virtually all religious or ethnic conflicts have shown, people often tend to focus on the differences, however small, and regard these as the true articles of faith.
In the Dunboyne school there are only a tiny number of Protestant children, but once there was one Protestant child in the school, there was going to be some degree of difficulty marrying the two faiths. The school never found a way to do this successfully, particularly in relation to matters of doctrine such as Communion.
Although the parents, teachers and the board reached agreement a year ago on a policy to handle this sensitive subject, this policy was not in accordance with the views of the patron body for the school, An Foras Patrúnachta. Despite all the bitter exchanges of the past few months, this position has essentially not changed.
The dispute might not be quite so bitter if personal differences had not also played a part. The relations between the board and the so-called "dissident" parents who support the principal, Mr Tomás Ó Dulaing, have deteriorated to a point where any kind of resolution to the dispute seems slim.
Brother Luke Monahan, a well-regarded figure in the education world, is attempting to broker an agreement between the two sides, but few would envy his job. Late-night calls, angry meetings and threats of legal action are now the order of the day on both sides.
Crudely put, the sides line up as follows: the board of management, the official parents' association and the patron body, Foras, are on one side; opposing their position are the group of parents who support Mr Ó Dulaing and all the teachers (backed by their union, the INTO).
The members of the board are portrayed by the parents' group as deeply conservative, doctrinaire and unyielding. They are also accused of having a deep personal dislike of the principal, which goes beyond his support for putting Communion instruction outside school hours.
The board and its ally, the school's parent association, see things differently. They accuse the dissident parents of trying to convert the school into a liberal multi-denominational school which would run contrary to what the school was set up to do in the first place - combine Catholic and Protestant teaching in the classroom.
They also say that the position of the principal is strictly an industrial relations matter and is not for parents to become involved in. And they claim that the dissident group are dwindling in number and are no longer representative of the main body of parents.
However, the other side points to a petition, signed by 80 per cent of parents, which rejected the board's decision to seek the dismissal of the principal.
Trying to find common ground between those positions looks almost impossible.
The school's future also looks perilous, with many parents choosing to send their children elsewhere in September.
Few parents want their children to attend a school where the national media are often camped outside the gates.
Whatever happens to Mr Ó Dulaing, the school faces an uncertain future.