Irish Church Retains Grip On Schools
DUBLIN — The Roman Catholic Church has lost the battles over divorce, contraception and gay marriage in Ireland. But it still wields what parents call the “baptism barrier”: influencing admission to public schools.
Nearly 97 percent of state-funded primary schools are under church control, and Irish law allows them to consider religion as the main factor in admissions. That means local schools, already oversubscribed, often choose to admit Catholics over non- Catholics.
Non- Catholic families, especially in the fast-growing Dublin area, are scrambling to find alternatives and resentful about what they see as discrimination based on religion.
Now the school issue is emerging as part of the debate over how far Ireland should go in becoming a more secular society.
Nikki Murphy’s son, Reuben, 4, was rejected by nine schools in Dublin last year because he was not baptized. Forced to delay his formal education by a year, she is frantically seeking alternatives for next fall. But Ms. Murphy, 36, said she would not baptize her son to gain access.
“I know lots of people who have gone down that road, but my husband, Clem, and I felt it wasn’t for us,” Ms. Murphy said. “I am very, very angry. We are almost out of options. We honestly don’t know where Reuben will go to school.”
A petition set up by a lawyer in Dublin, Paddy Monahan, has attracted almost 20,000 signatures in favor of overturning the preference given to Catholic children. A recently formed advocacy group, Education Equality, is planning a legal challenge.
“We believe the discrimination in entry policies and the religious ethos that permeates schools runs contrary to Irish law and certainly to international law on human rights,” said the group’s chairwoman, April Duff.
Recently, a United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child asked Ireland’s minister for children, James Reilly, to justify preferential access to state-funded schools on the basis of religion. He said that carrying out a more pluralist system had been a “problem.” Later, he said it may take a referendum to bring about change because of the constitutional protection afforded to religious institutions..
In 2011, the Irish government recommended that some Catholic primary schools in 25 of 43 areas across the country be handed over to a multidenominational organization, Educate Together. Since then, the church has handed over only eight schools.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has accused unnamed individuals in the Catholic establishment of resisting reform, but others in the church hierarchy do not agree.
“I would not like to think that baptism was some kind of a stamp that you had to get to get into a school,” said Archbishop Eamon Martin, the most senior prelate in Ireland.