Sir, – I think that many of the contributors to this page on the issue of school patronage are missing the point.
The fact that some church-run schools welcome children of all faiths and none is irrelevant – the important point is that they are under no obligation to do so.
Section 7 of the Equal Status Act 2000 allows schools to discriminate in their enrollment policies against children who have not been baptised or are of a different religion. An oversubscribed church-run school can use religion as the first criterion to shorten an application list – and it is obvious that this is common practice, otherwise why have the discriminatory law at all?
Given that almost the entire Irish national school system is church-run, the difficulties facing non-religious parents are clear.
It is understandable that those unaffected by this do not realise that the mere existence of the discriminatory statutory provision introduces deeply unsettling uncertainty into the lives of many non-religious parents who have funded schools through their taxes just like their religious counterparts.
Parents should not have to rely on the goodwill of a benevolent principal or patron. All children should be guaranteed equal access to education regardless of the decisions their parents make regarding religion, but this is simply not the case in Ireland today. – Yours, etc,
PADDY MONAHAN,
Raheny, Dublin 5.