Why does the Catholic Church still have control over some schools in Ireland? It's time this changed

I’d be happy for the state to determine how state schools are run. The ethos of Catholic run schools is disgusting. There is no positives to having the Catholic Church run schools. They are scum.

Nonsense - you clearly know next to nothing about ET schools, and are very keen to make excuses for religious indoctrination.

Oooooph, trying to absolve the Catholic Church for their own crimes by blaming the government?

That’s a bit sick.

It is not the job of the parents to set education policy. There is a huge demand for non-catholic education and it is the job of the government to offer it and address that demand.

The government is been lazy and negligent leaving it the the RCC to pick up the heavy lifting.

Behaved abysmally🙄 calling the churches atrocities for what they are is acceptable you know.

Im speaking as a family member of someone who was abused in a Catholic school. Not decades ago - in the 5-10 years ago range.

Absolutely nothing has changed with the Catholic hierarchies atitude to abuse. If the abuser is one of their own - and in this case an 'active' church goer, not a cleric - they will close ranks and protect the abuser to the hilt. The child will not matter.

D/Education child protection guidines will be dispensed with (...sure they're only guidelines, not requirements) they wont cooperate with investigations.

The abuser in the case I know continued to work while under criminal investigation - which is contrary to D/Education guidelines.

Tusla are powerless to intervene in schools and are a basketcase organisatiion anyway.

The abuser I'm referring to is still working today. Could be in charge of someone reading this threads child tomorrow morning in school.

The reality is the Catholic church is still covering up abuse in schools and Ive no doubt that in 20 years time we'll have another generation of victims coming forward who were abused in the 2020s.

So the gardai allowed this to continue? What shows up when the person is vetted?

What evidence would that be?

Divestment is almost non-existent, so ETs are established where new schools are being built. This is overwhelmingly happening in outer suburbs of cities.

A lot of people are under the entirely mistaken impression that the church contributes to the running of schools…

A lot more people are under the entirely mistaken impression that it doesn’t. The church contributes to schools in that the Boards of Management are staffed by volunteers. There are some members of Boards who aren’t members of the Church, but they’re rare.

I do agree with the rest of what you said though - it wasn’t that the State couldn’t have established State owned schools and managed them similarly to the way schools are managed by the local authorities in the UK. It was that the Church at the time muscled their way in there and the State hasn’t been able to get them out ever since as it would require the State taking responsibility for compensating staff who are tasked with running the schools which would be just as enormous an undertaking as the Church’s original takeover of the provision of education and other services in Ireland.

The evidence that by sheer virtue of their numbers (which are large and already long established) by comparison to the number of ET schools (which are tiny and a relatively modern phenomenon) - schools operating in disadvantaged areas are more likely to be owned and managed by religious organisations.

Divestment was always a complete farce (it’s why the Church appeared fully supportive of it - they correctly predicted it would amount to nothing and they’d still look like they weren’t responsible for its failure). It’s the reason why years later, ET schools are operating from temporary premises and run-down buildings, requiring significant investment to establish permanent school structures that is ridiculously slow in coming, and when it does - ET schools are established on the outskirts of urban areas which requires parents to make travel arrangements for their children, an additional burden that they don’t have to consider if they send their children to one of the many more local religious ethos schools.

There’s no difference in the overall quality of education provided by any of the Patrons involved in education, it’s just a different form of education is all.

Totally agree they shouldn't control any schools but simply removing the catholic church is not enough. You cannot ignore the islamic expansion in Ireland either when it comes to schools. They're up to 2 already. Remove all religious influence from all schools and we're in for a better future.

Religious class should be to teach about the pros and cons of all religions.

https://mpeb.ie/about/our-schools/

The solution seems fairly obvious.

Have you ever tried taking candy from a baby? It’s considerably more difficult in practice than the idiom would have anyone believe it is possible to do in theory.

That’s why your solution seems obvious to you, whereas in practice what you’re suggesting is considerably more difficult than it first appears.

Parents don't care that the school is catholic and if you took it off them and gave it to an atheist group they still wouldn't care because it would still be the local school.

Dunno ‘bout that now 😁

“People who don’t share my vision for Education” sounds better. The way you describe it is more likely to an antagonise people against your ideas than give you a fair hearing in order to mull over your ideas and whether they offer any benefit whatsoever to models of education already in existence.

I addressed it pretty comprehensively in this post?

It’s the reason why divestment was a complete farce and should never have been suggested in the first place, as opposed to the establishment of new schools entirely. The idea all seemed fine in theory, that like you suggest, parents wouldn’t care as it’s still the local school… but it turns out that in reality they did care, and they care very much, so much so that in many cases divestment had to be completely abandoned as it was proving more difficult to do in reality than it had been thought was possible in theory.

The idea of asking parents whether or not they were happy with their current arrangement for their children’s education was either a pretty stupid way of establishing whether or not schools which offered an alternative to Catholic education were required, or, and what is far more likely the case - it was a deliberate attempt to undermine calls for the establishment of new schools offering an alternative to Catholic education.

Either way it doesn’t matter while the Dept. Of Education insists that while there are places in existing schools which can accommodate children, a new school will not be established in the area as the expense cannot be justified - the Public Accounts Committee would go into meltdown.

It wouldn’t have to apply to minority schools in the same way it’s applied to majority schools. The Education (Admissions to Schools) Act 2018 for example doesn’t apply to all schools in the same way - exceptions are permitted for minorities.

It certainly seems like it would be a monopoly, to replace a monopoly, which I’m certain is not what most parents would want, nor is it shown from any previous surveys that’s what they want either - parents are all about more choices in education, not less.

As for whatever the State says - the Dept. of Education has introduced something similar to what you’re describing in that it’s a lottery - parents are asked for their preferences from a list of schools in the area, and then it’s as though their expression of their preferences doesn’t mean shìt - they’ll be told where their children are to go. That’s working out about as well as could be expected.

Or their big picture isn’t the same as your big picture.

1. There’s a distinction between Civil and Criminal Law which I think you would attribute to semantics so isn’t worth disappearing down that rabbit hole.
2. The State does insist on proper child protection standards in ALL schools, not just in schools, but at home too… in fact anywhere where there’s children really - the State insists on proper child protection standards. This doesn’t mean they are always effective, but it’s because they are rigorously monitored that the State becomes aware of cases where the child protection standards they insist on, are being violated. There’s considerable concern over the fact that children from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds are over-represented in the statistics, but that’s just taking the bigger picture at face value.

The “licensing system”, or rather it’s equivalent, exists in the form of whether or not a school meets the requirements to be regarded as a recognised school for the purposes of receiving public funding for the provision of education, ie - delivery of the national curriculum. The DES also conducts regular inspections and evaluations of all recognised schools in the State, and accessible to the general public:

https://www.gov.ie/en/school-reports/

This is pretty disgusting to say or even imply.

The state is nowhere near as guilty as the RCC. The church committed these crimes, not the state, the church tried to hush the victims, not the state.

Hang your head in shame for this.

Talking about values when it was the church itself and its members that committed these crimes. If we know anything, the RCC is void of any modern values that do good. It’s an organisation of evil, and you’re trying to defend it. Get lost.

Defence of the organisation isn’t needed - individuals within the organisation are responsible for their actions, and it is only those individuals have any criminal liability. That the State is ultimately responsible for the protection of children is just a fact. That the State has on numerous occasions attempted to absolve itself of any responsibility or liability, is also a fact:

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22002-9263%22%5D%7D

https://colemanlegalpartners.ie/louise-okeefe-slams-child-abuse-redress/

TL:DR version:

Abuse in schools was widespread, and no safeguards were in place to protect students, she added. "To my mind, for the State to do an inquiry, can they really confine it to an order who provided education in one, two, three, or four schools? Can they really confine it to just one [religious] order?

“The curriculum is set by the State, the inspectors inspect the schools on behalf of the State, and the State provides all the rules and regulations for the running of the schools. To me, the responsibility for not just the schools run by the Spiritans but for all schools is held by the State.” 

In 2014, the ECHR found that the State had responsibility for Ms O’Keeffe’s protection from sexual abuse as a young child in school as it had no measures in place that would effectively detect and prevent child abuse in schools. 

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41011877.html

As a family member of someone who was abused in recent years, this is a load of rubbish and insulting to victims and their families. There is ZERO enforcement of child protection in schools. Its everyones job and nobodies. DES tellls victims familes that it cannot investigate child protection issues in schools and advises parents to raise any concerns with the Patron i.e. the Catholic church. T

The organisation didn’t move anyone - individuals within the organisation moved other individuals around in an attempt to shield themselves and the individuals they moved, from being subject to criminal prosecution. That’s not to say there weren’t prosecutions at the time, it was one of the reasons why the ECHR found in favour of Louise O’ Keefe’s action against the State:

A State could not absolve itself from its obligations to minors in primary schools by delegating those duties to private bodies or individuals.

…

In determining the State’s responsibility, the Court had to examine whether the State should have been aware of a risk of sexual abuse of minors such as the applicant in National Schools at the relevant time and whether it had adequately protected children, through its legal system, from such ill-treatment.

The Court found that the State had to have been aware of the level of sexual crime against minors through its prosecution of such crimes at a significant rate prior to the 1970s. A number of reports from the 1930s to the 1970s gave detailed statistical evidence on the prosecution rates in Ireland for sexual offences against children. The Ryan Report of May 2009 also evidenced complaints made to the authorities prior to and during the 1970s about the sexual abuse of children by adults. Although that report focused on reformatory and industrial schools, complaints about abuse in National Schools were also recorded.

Accordingly, when relinquishing control of the education of the vast majority of young children to non-State actors, the State should have adopted commensurate measures and safeguards to protect the children from the potential risks to their safety through, at minimum, effective mechanisms for the detection and reporting of any ill-treatment by and to a State-controlled body.

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22002-9263%22%5D%7D

The RCC actively moved priests who raped children. Don’t try and rewrite history here, which is what you’re doing. These were acts committed and protected by the church, no wall of text will change that, as desperately as you try.

You can tell that to the victims who were told, by a representative of the church, that what happened to them, didn’t actually happen. Same with those victims, the world over, in residential schools in Ireland, Canada and across Africa, that it wasn’t the church. I bet you wouldn’t be saying that to them to their face.

You’re projection won’t work, nice try.

I’ve been stating fact, which is that the RCC actively moved priests, were protected by bishops and this went all the way to the Vatican. These are facts, these acts also happened across the world, so again it’s not any particular state or government, it was the RCC. Bishops often didn’t report these acts to protect the church, again, nothing to do with any government.

Victims were often silenced and made sign non-disclosures, again, by the RCC, not the state.

You are not only wrong, you’re delusional if you genuinely believe the tripe you are spouting here.

It's not individuals within these organisations though. It's systemic. It's the cover-up.

Oh my…how can someone be so ignorant of these things?

It is not an opinion that the RCC committed horrific crimes against children. That is a fact, wether you like it, agree with it, or anything, that is a simple fact.

You’ve provided no evidence, you do this all the time, you’re being purposely contrarian for the sake of it. It’s a classic case of knowing enough to think you’re right, but not enough to know you’re wrong. And then you double down on it.

Again, the crimes committed were by the RCC and its members, they were covered up by its members as well. Fact.