Friday, 23rd October 2009
Immediate Release

Bishop of Cork contradicts Minister’s version of Protestant Schools’ Dispute

‘The Minister hides behind secret advice given to him about the charter of the people – the 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?’
On Friday 23rd October 2009, in a statement to parents, teachers and students to be made at the prize-day of Midleton College, Cork, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork - Bishop Paul Colton – will contradict the Minister for Education and Science’s version of the Protestant Schools’ dispute.

‘There has been much in the media since our last prize-day about schools such as ours. On this occasion when we celebrate the life of this school, and indeed schools like it, as Chairperson of the Board of Management, I take this opportunity to clarify one aspect of this sorry business.

Contrary to what the Minister for Education and Science has stated, the Bishops of the Church of Ireland, and those who work with us, have indeed responded to him since our meeting with him on 5th November 2008. Again and again, including in a Sunday newspaper article two weeks ago, in Dáil Éireann this week, in what has become a defensive mantra, the Minister 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.

I want to tell you today that the Bishops of the Church of Ireland, in fact, wrote to the Minister on 2nd March 2009 asking him ‘…to endorse the long-established place of those schools within the free education scheme as ‘block grant schools’. This letter was copied to every member of Oireachtas Éireann. 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!

On behalf of the Bishops and on behalf of the Secondary Education Committee, on Thursday 7th May, Canon John McCullagh and I spent nearly two hours in a meeting with some of the Minister’s most senior officials. In a long and rambling discussion we repeated our request for reassurance that the block grant is secure and made the proposal that the situation which has pertained for over 40 years be restored – that is to say – that because of our special minority situation, our Protestant schools be treated, as before, as block grant schools, within the free scheme. This is our proposal.

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?

In case the Minister still has not heard it the message is this: we want our schools restored to the position they were delicately put in by his predecessor in 1967. The Minister talks of proposals. When someone, as the saying goes, ‘has you over a barrel’ (which is what this unilateral reclassification feels like to our schools) obviously it is naïve – disingenuous even – to talk of waiting for our proposals. Our proposal is this and for clarity I state it, yet again, publicly, we want our schools, in their uniquely difficult situation, restored to parity with schools in the free scheme, where they have been since free education was introduced 42 years ago!

- Ends –