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A RULE WHICH guides religious education in primary schools should be abolished and transferring over 250 schools from the Catholic Church to new patrons should be looked at, an advisory group has said.
The Advisory Group to the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in primary schools yesterday gave details of its interim report at the Department of Education, recommending that there should be a “rolling plan for incremental change” in the patronage of primary schools in Ireland.
It was also recommended that that a controversial rule which governs religious instruction in primary school education in Ireland, Rule 68, should be abolished.
The forum was set up by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn earlier this year to identify ways in which to transfer schools out of Catholic patronage.
It heard from over 200 interests groups including submissions by young people.
It said it was not “re-designing” the primary education system in Ireland but rather “adapting a system to be more inclusive”.
The forum heard yesterday that 96 per cent of primary schools are under denominational patronage in Ireland with 3,000 of the 3,200 primary schools in Ireland managed by the Catholic Church.
The Advisory Group said under the “rolling plan” as opposed to a “big bang” approach 258 schools in 18 dioceses across 47 areas should be part of the fist phase of the so-called “divesting process”.
The forum recommended that the views of parents should be sought through a special questionnaire which will be formulated by the Department of Education and the education interest groups.
The abolishing of Rule 68 was also recommended in the report.
Rule 68 is a controversial rule which states that “of all the parts of a school curriculum, Religious Instruction is by far the most important” and that primary duty of a teacher is to ensure a pupil observes God’s laws.
The group said it should be “deleted”.
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Is the RCC making any contribution to this compensation fund? They were the employer and they received money both from the State and from the businesses which they carried work out for. Surely, there must be some liability there. Perhaps, a transfer of RCC school property to the State, if they are stuck for ready cash?
The RCC have not paid one single euro into the fund nor have any of the Orders of Nuns.
Is it me or does the compensation sound small. They worked for years as slave labour in these laundries.
Whether intending to or not you’ve made their claim only about money.
@Ross
I’ve seen a few of these ladies on TV and they have stated that they are looking for an official apology.
Read my comment fully. It was directed at the first comment who said that the money was too low.
Maybe that’s the your mind works so you picked it up like that. If they looked for or didn’t that doesn’t change the fact they should be fairly compensated.
Why aren’t the RCC paying the full amount?? Typical, the Irish government bend over and take it up the ar se every time from this corrupt and perverted cult!! Time to separate church and state for once and for all!!
It’s a good start, but i think they want vindication as well.
It seems small change-maybe there waiting for these people to disappear off the planet for good,to reduce that €12 million compo figure!…
The maths on that don’t add up and there is nothing wrong with my calculator.If you take 357 and even assume they were at top of scale. They got lump sum of 65,000 multiply that by 357 and you get 23,205,000 that’s not 12.8 million
Also when she states CERTAIN MEDICAL SCHEMES I would like to know exactly what schemes she is referring to.
have your say