The Balbriggan school problem has arisen from the conjuncture of two issues, neither of which has been adequately addressed by the civil and/or ecclesiastical authoritie, writes Garret FitzGerald
The first of these issues is the conflict between the rapidly changing religious character of Irish society and the confessional character of our educational system. The second matter is the educational problem posed by the over-concentration of new ethnic groups in particular parts of this country.
On three occasions in the past two years I have raised these problems in this column - and I have also raised the latter issue informally with the Department of Education.
I have a feeling that neither the religious nor the civil authorities yet appreciate the scale of the swing away from religion during the past 15 or 20 years, nor its full implications for our educational system.
To my mind the best measure of this process is the extent to which couples seeking to marry are now choosing civil rather than religious ceremonies. The proportion of couples choosing a civil ceremony has increased six-fold in the past 14 years, to 22.5 per cent in 2005. At the present rate of change we must expect that within about seven years one-third of all marriages will involve civil ceremonies. That stage has in fact already been reached in all our cities: in Limerick two years ago it was already 38 per cent.
This percentage is, of course, affected by the fact that one-half of those marrying at age 35 or later choose civil marriages, partly because many of these are second marriages of people who have been divorced. But in 2005 civil marriage was also the choice of 17 per cent of women marrying under the age of 35, few of whom are divorced and most of whom are likely to have children who in a couple of years' time will be of schoolgoing age.
Some of these parents may prefer, for educational or social reasons, to send their children to a Catholic primary school, but, equally, some Catholic parents prefer a pluralist education. So, one way or another, there is now a significant, and rapidly growing, demand for pluralist primary education.
But there are only 43 Educate Together primary schools, catering for about 1,000 of the 60,000 children starting school each year. Thus more than 98 per cent of parents of children starting school have no choice but to seek entry to church-run schools.
In areas of high population density where the child population is growing, this expanding need may be met by opening new non-religious schools, and the Archbishop of Dublin (who in October last year endorsed a plurality of educational patronage, proposing public management of new primary schools) was right to be critical last Wednesday of the State for its failure to fulfil its constitutional responsibilities in this respect. So far the State itself has opened only one such school!
Dr Martin has also shown a willingness to deal with the problem of high-density areas that are not experiencing population growth, for he also opened the way to primary school reorganisation in such areas with a view to releasing an existing Catholic school building for those seeking a pluralist education.
What the archbishop has not addressed, however, is the much more difficult problem that exists outside major urban areas, where two-thirds of our population live, and where there is not a sufficient concentration of population to permit the approaches that he has been advocating. These areas include some parts of his own archdiocese.
As to the Catholic primary schools in Dublin, the archbishop is concerned that these "be more distinctively Catholic". However, it is the application of just such a "priority for baptised Catholics" policy in a place like Balbriggan that has had the - no doubt unintended - effect of creating precisely the kind of ethnic apartheid against which he himself warned last October.
For, in that same address, he expressed his concern about the emergence of "schools where over 50 per cent of the students are international children rather than Irish - with 80 per cent of new entrants in one school last year falling into the international category - many of these not being Catholic".
However, in Balbriggan the new school created as a result of his policy looks like having a 100 per cent "black Irish" clientele - to use the term recently employed by the census!
Moreover, even in densely populated major urban areas such as Dublin, the policy Dr Martin advocates would have ethnically divisive effects that he may not have appreciated. For only 25 per cent of Irish people of African ethnic origin and only 30 per cent of our Asian population are Catholics. Moreover, 70 per cent of the ethnic Africans and 80 per cent of the ethnic Asians live in one or other of our major cities.
Now, if as a result of the archbishop's well-intended proposals almost three-quarters of the children of these two ethnic groups are to be excluded from urban Catholic schools and hived off to new schools in which in many cases they would be likely hugely to outnumber white Irish students, this would create local apartheid of a potentially dangerous kind - which was certainly not his intention.
The archbishop's urban proposals also raise two other questions: first of all, is his approach shared by the Catholic bishops of the other major cities? And, second, what about the two-thirds of the country outside these cities throughout most of which his approach cannot be applied because the only primary school in most areas will normally be religious schools under the patronage of the Catholic Church or in some cases the Church of Ireland?
It has hitherto been the practice for such religious schools to accept, and indeed welcome, children of other or no faiths, allowing them to opt out of the schools' religious instruction (In his October address Dr Martin also spoke warmly of this "sensitive and generous way" in which Catholic primary schools generally have handled the new ethnic challenge.).
Are we now to have two kinds of Catholic schools - in the cities schools which exclude children who have not received Catholic baptism, and in most of the rest of the country ones which welcome all-comers?
In some cases, such as Balbriggan (although this may arise even more often at secondary level), Catholic religious authorities, concerned to maintain the ethos of their schools, have responded to this drift away from religion by seeking evidence from parents that their children have been baptised.
In some cases they are indeed reported to have gone beyond this by seeking to establish that the parent are regular Mass-goers - even, it has been suggested, in some cases checking with the children the veracity of their parents on this matter!
Parents, desperate to get schooling for their children, thus find themselves under pressure to falsify their position, being pressurised by concern for their children's education to baptise their children for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. I cannot believe that our ecclesiastical leaders have reflected adequately on the religious consequences of such a policy.
Church and State should now immediately review the ethnic division that they have together inadvertently managed to create in Balbriggan. But, more generally, the future development of our whole primary education system clearly requires a thorough review at national level - at the State/church forum which the Taoiseach has recently established.
An early meeting of that body should be called at which the Taoiseach, Minister for Education, and Minster of State for Integration could seek an agreed resolution of these problems.