Ireland 'hostile place for Protestant pupils'

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Church of Ireland in attack on minister



THE Church of Ireland launched a stinging attack on Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe yesterday and suggested that the country was becoming a "hostile place for the Protestant community".

"We're not going to keep our heads down any more," warned the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Paul Colton, who accused the minister of "hiding behind secret advice" to cover his decision to cut €2.8m in grants to Protestant schools.

The bishop criticised the "defensive mantra" from the minister who "says that he is still waiting to hear our proposals in response to the budgetary brutality and financial backstreet butchery inflicted on Protestant schools in last year's Budget".

Response

But the Bishops of the Church of Ireland had, in fact, written to the minister on March 2, 2009, asking him "to endorse the long-established place of those schools within the free education scheme as 'block grant schools'," he said.

The letter was also copied to every member of the Oireachtas.

"They all know, therefore, the truth of what I am saying. Other than a pro-forma acknowledgment, the Bishops of the Church of Ireland have never had a response to that letter. Did we not deserve a response? Instead the minister clamours for our response."

Bishop Colton added that on May 7, he and Canon John McCullagh spent nearly two hours in a meeting with some of the minister's most senior officials. In a "long and rambling discussion", they repeated their request for reassurance that the situation which had pertained for over 40 years be restored.

"This is our proposal," he said. "These are just two of the formal occasions when we have stated this to the minister.

"Clearly he chooses not to hear it. He does not understand. He hides behind secret advice about the document, not his alone, but the charter of the people of this country -- our Constitution.

"Are we seriously to believe that the founding fathers and framers of our Constitution envisaged a situation where this Republic would become a hostile place for the children of the Protestant minority?" he asked.

Mr O'Keeffe said he did not agree with the bishop, as the only proposal that was put forward by the Protestant community was that the cuts be reversed, which he ruled out.

He repeated his willingness to discuss problems that had arisen in rural Protestant schools in particular.

Meanwhile, a statement released by the Newtown Quaker secondary school in Waterford said it was appalled at what it saw as the grossly unfair treatment of its school, and others in the same sector.

It said: "The changes introduced have increased the pupil/teacher ratio to 20:1 and withdrawn a range of grants from these schools, greatly in excess of the changes made for other schools in the free scheme.

"This will lead to an even greater financial burden on parents, particularly those in less fortunate circumstances."

- John Walshe Education Editor

Irish Independent

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Cork's Bloody Secret continues to connect. The former Dean of St Patrick's, Victor Griffin, was so moved by the programme he writes to tell me that his mother warned him "Victor, keep quiet -- keep off religion and politics or you'll get us all burnt out."

The Dean (he will always be Dean to me) and myself go back a bit. Around the time of H Blocks I attended services at St Patrick's since I lived locally. So did the posh British Provo supporter, Brigid Rose Dugdale.

As the armed struggle went on, the temperature rose in the redbrick streets. Young thugs wielding four- by-twos frequently attacked children from St Patrick's Choir School. One child lost an eye.

Anne Harris wrote a fine piece about it for the Sunday Independent called "The Shadow on St Patrick's". The gardai did their best. But Protestant parents deemed it prudent to keep the head down. It was a reaction of repression, long familiar to their country cousins -- but remote from the pluralist world of the Dublin Catholic and Protestant bourgeoisie.

The Dean encloses a copy of his book, Enough Religion To Make Us Hate: Reflections on Religion and Politics. He marks the following passage. It deals with the period after the enforced exodus of thousands of southern Protestants in 1919-1920. "We as Protestants have to put up with all sorts of things we dislike down here in the Republic, boycotts as in Fethard-on-Sea, in Co Wexford, job discrimination, compulsory Irish, Roman Canon law upheld by the State, the Ne Temere marriage decree (which contributed in no small measure to the decline in the Protestant population from 10 per cent in 1920 to little over 3 per cent in 1990, whereas in Northern Ireland the Roman Catholic population increased by 10 per cent over the same period); a 1937 Constitution reflecting Roman Catholic values, etc."

All in the past? Certainly most Dublin Protestants live on a protected planet. But rural Protestants find the past dies slowly. Eileen Cloney, the child at the centre of the Fethard-on-Sea boycott, recently revealed to the Sunday Times that she had experienced a revival of local tension, particularly on the part of the young.

That is no surprise. The political websites are packed with tribal patrollers who pour out pure poison after every attempt to address what happened to southern Protestants in the period 1919-22. Each incident, be it the Coolacrease killings, the burning of Clifden orphanage, or the Dunmanway Murders, is subjected to tribal scrutiny. If a single fact is found faulty, the experience as a whole is deemed not to exist.

Phoenix strongly supports this punctillious approach. Luckily, it has never said a good word about me. If they did I would disown whatever had earned it. I hope to die in their displeasure.

To the Seanad. The press gallery is packed. Sotto voce, I tell my colleagues it might be wiser not to say a word about the proposed abolition of the Seanad. Recalling Myles na gCopaleen on Irish, I remind them there is nothing as risible as Seanadoiri, talking in the Seanad, about the abolition of the Seanad.

In vain. When the tumult subsides, I rise to recall that the first Seanad was set up to give representation to the Protestant minority, that a delegation is that day meeting the Taoiseach to discuss funding for Protestant schools, that we should support them.

Senator Jim Walsh and Senator Donie Cassidy do so. Coming both from the majority tradition and from the country, they speak with sensitivity. They explain why a scattered Protestant communities need special school funds. Sometimes the Seanad earns its keep.

To St Vincent's, called to the colours by General Anaesthetic. Waiting, I read a perceptive piece by Tom Molloy of the Irish Independent on the Protestant schools issue: "Any understanding of the modern Protestant experience must acknowledge the near pogrom which took place in the Republic after independence". Doubtless the tribal patrols will demand he define "near pogrom".

Then it is time for David Quinlan and Cathal Nolan. As the latter administers what he jauntily calls "jungle juice" he distracts me with judicious comments on Cork's Bloody Secret. So I go out with a smile. Mind you, on a slow day the Seanad can have the same soporific effect.

There are two reasons why the grants to Protestant schools should be restored. First, the inherent injustice of suddenly cutting off funds which were supplied for 40 years. Second, the possible political impact of the controversy on progressive politics in another part of this island. Billy Tate, MBE, the principal of Belvoir Park Primary School, Belfast, writes about this angle in the Belfast Telegraph: "I am both a Unionist and a passionate believer in NS links. The focus of my work is on tackling sectarianism wherever it raises its ugly head. This is the type of story that sends chills down the back of Protestants in Northern Ireland, as it makes the ROI look like a cold house."

Time the Taoiseach and Cabinet took this poisoned chalice from Batt O'Keeffe and followed the advice of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who supported his Protestant counterpart, Archbishop John Neill, on Morning Ireland.

In the past I criticised Archbishop Martin for being too fast with the politically correct soundbite. He is being brave here, however, because support for grants to Protestant schools is only popular among real republicans.

But the Taoiseach would do well to accept Archbishop Martin's advice on Morning Ireland which can be summed up simply -- give them the grants.

- Eoghan Harris

Sunday Independent

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Protestants can be excused for missing the cruel irony

What was an attempt to reassure religious minorities is being exploited to deprive them of vital funding, writes John-Paul McCarthy

Sunday October 25 2009

In his moving memoir, The Strange Alchemy of Law and Life, the recently retired South African Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs told the following story.

Before his car was blown up by the apartheid-era security services, and before he lost an eye and an arm, he recalled a discussion he had with some black law students during his exile in Mozambique.

The students styled themselves as "The Anti-Bill of Rights Committee", and this perplexed the younger Sachs.

When he challenged the students on this kind of profanity, they explained that considering the experience of most black South Africans under apartheid, they could see nothing in existing constitutional thought except "a bill of whites".

Many of the Republic's poorer Protestants must be feeling something similar to this in recent days, as the Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe insists on depriving some of their schools of vital government grants.

The minister cites the constitutional prohibition against religious discrimination as grounds for withdrawing these vital grants since Catholic schools are not in receipt of similar cash transfers.

Rural Protestants can be excused for not seeing the cruel irony here.

The religious provisions in question date back to 1937 when the then-Government was desperate to show the world that an independent Irish republic could do better than Richelieu and Bossuet and would not descend into religious hysteria.

What began as an attempt to reassure the Catholic State's religious minorities has now morphed into the mechanism by which their most vulnerable schools are denied financial support that has been theirs for decades.

The minister is obviously sincere in his desire to avoid a sectarian fracas over taxpayers' money, but his constitutional argument raises as many questions as it answers.

The Constitution also recognises the free exercise of religion, a right which is burdened by the termination of modest state aid in this context.

The Constitution also contains a promise that the State shall not force parents to send their children to state-run schools, or any other type of school that is designated by the State.

The financial hardship caused by the withdrawal of these grants among rural Protestants could very well result in parents feeling obliged to send their children to state schools.

The Constitution also contains a provision whereby the State pledges itself to supplement and give reasonable assistance to private schools, as part of the State's commitment to advancing the public good.

The minister is evidently frightened of a court challenge to these Protestant grants, and is also afraid of being accused of condoning preferential treatment based on religious identity.

And yet the Constitution's admonitions against religious discrimination can be read in a variety of ways.

Some might read this prohibition as a blanket ban on any kind of assistance that is not mathematically equal as between the various sects within the State.

Another, less literal, approach would start with the recognition that sometimes in order to treat particular groups equally, the State must actually treat them differently, a conceptual insight that the Constitution also recognises in its discussion of the dictates of equality. A minister who was less frightened by his lawyers might start from this insight and argue that these grants serve a compelling state interest in recognising the enormous cultural contribution of the Protestant communions to the life of the Republic.

These grants may not match the test of literal, mathematical equality viz a viz the other communions in the State, but they flow from the State's belief that equality is a more complex concept, one that needs to be sensitive to the historical contexts which have moulded the education debate in this State since independence.

The grants are not advanced as part of a narrow sectarian campaign of discrimination which seeks to favour these Protestant schools, rather as nurseries of pluralism and diversity in a republic that has much ground to make up in this regard. Constitutional arguments advanced in this Republic have historically always had something of a Martian tone.

The constitutional limitations the minister cites as his shackles in this case also contain what looks on its face to be a non-negotiable prohibition on any religious endowments -- or any financial transfers to religious groups.

The entire history of the State since 1937 gives the lie to this seemingly benign rule since, for most of our history, the State has funded a sectarian education system at the behest of the religious orders, with the Catholic bishops front and centre in the trough.

This continued for decades because the Catholic Church could claim it was merely facilitating the free choice of citizens, who elected to send their children to Catholic schools.

It was right of course in a legal sense, in that there was no compulsion, but as Tom Garvin put it in his pungent book, Preventing the Future, "the Church insisted on having a monopolistic control of young people in a church-owned and state-financed school system. Much ecclesiastical property in Ireland was actually purchased with taxpayers' money".

This drove a horse and four through the spirit of the original endowment clause, and did much to demoralise isolated rural Protestants, as did the vulgar Trinitarianism of the Constitution's preamble, and it's incessant natural law terminology throughout.

The minister could also cite his desire to alleviate the alienation of minorities that follow from these clauses as a compelling State interest to justify the continuation of these grants. He has other constitutional arguments in his quiver should he decide to look again at the grant issue in a less severe way.

We must interpret our Constitution the only way we know how, as thinking, feeling, historically literate citizens.

John-Paul McCarthy teaches Irish history at Exeter College, Oxford.

Sunday Independent

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Well after reading what has been said I do sympathize considering the small amounts involved, I support there stance completely.

[lochy]

My opinion on this is that grants to protestant schools must be maintained. They are a minority in our population and should have some special rights, just to even the playing field a bit. The national school system is a catholic one. My local school explicitly told a work colleague of mine that they would not allow his son into the school even though it was a 3 minute walk away as he was not baptised.
There are moves to seperate church from education in Ireland which is welcome and necessary but until a school cannot stipulate baptism into the catholic faith as a pre-requisitie for entry, then we must make special provision for all other faiths within Ireland.
We cannot discriminate against them on one hand and then expect them to be equal in others. Private catholic schools should play their way, Private protestant schools should not until we have a education system that is seperate form the catholic church.

[Jim]

Faith schools should be abolished all together, if they want to exist then do it on by their own means.

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Good post lochy and a very fair post at that. I cant believe such rubbish like not allowing a child into a school because he was not baptised, that just shows how corrupt, worng and discriminatry the systym is.

Setanta after the discrimiantion at plumtilla you said that this tyoe of thing would never happen again, then it happened again and you said it wouldnt happen again, and now this what lochy has stated. Shocking, and people think we are sectarian up here.