Schools and the politics of religion and diversity in the Republic of Ireland: Separate but equal? 9781526101143

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Schools and the politics of religion and diversity in the Republic of Ireland

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Schools and the politics of religion and diversity in the Republic of Ireland Separate but equal? Karin Fischer

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Karin Fischer 2016 The right of Karin Fischer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9196 4 hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

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To John

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Contents

List of abbreviations Preface and acknowledgements Introduction 1 The legacy of Catholic cultural nationalism and religious segregation 2 Social upheavals and discourses on Irish identity: the place of religion 3 Education policy and social, cultural and religious diversity: what role for schools? 4 Citizenship v. religion in the school curricula of the 2000s 5 The ‘national’ school system: still denominational and private 6 Rights, segregation and discrimination 7 Schools, ethos and inclusion Conclusion

page viii ix 1 11 32 56 80 113 147 179 207

Bibliography 215 Index231

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Abbreviations

ASTI CEIST CORI CPSMA CSPE ECRI ERB FIRE INTO IPPN IVEA NAPD NCCA NCDE NUI PE RE SDLP SPHE TD TUI VEC

Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland Catholic Education An Irish Schools Trust Conference of Religious in Ireland Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association Civic, Social and Political Education European Committee against Racism and Intolerance Education about Religions and Beliefs Future Involvement of Religious in Education Irish National Teachers’ Organisation Irish Primary Principals’ Network Irish Vocational Education Association National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals National Council for Curriculum and Assessment National Committee for Development Education National University of Ireland Physical Education Religious Education Social Democratic and Labour Party Social, Personal and Health Education Teachta Dála (member of Dáil Éireann) Teachers’ Union of Ireland Vocational Education Committee

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Preface and acknowledgements

When I  finished my Ph.D.  on Irish school history and identity in the late 1990s, Ireland was undergoing massive changes and brimming with possibilities. Like many other researchers interested in the link between education, society and politics, I wanted to analyse the changes brought about by immigration and explore how the education system dealt with these. I gradually realised, however, that the presence of children of immigrants might understandably be a ‘shock to the system’ for many schools and teachers (and would obviously require specific action in education policy), but that in the wider picture it was more of an accelerator of change, as it highlighted crucial issues that the Irish State had yet to deal with in education. In other words, with or without immigration, social changes in Ireland were bound to bring out into the open what amounts to a fundamental flaw in the Irish education system from a democratic perspective, and this was what I decided to look at in the end. My background research was facilitated in the late 2000s by my post at Trinity College, Dublin, and I take this opportunity to thank Edward Arnold and David Scott, who made it possible for me to come back, if only for a while! An earlier version of this work appeared in 2011, thanks to Thierry Dubost, head of the research group in Irish Studies at the University of Caen, and to the work of the Presses Universitaires de Caen. A lot has happened since in Ireland, and I felt a new, updated English version could bring this work to a wider audience. I am also deeply grateful to Anne Lodge as organiser and to the participants of the 2011 Conference of the Irish Educational Studies Association in Dublin: our exchanges and the encouraging response I received after delivering my paper spurred me on to make this happen. I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Áine Hyland, who prefaced the earlier French version of this book and who was unfailingly supportive throughout, and also to Deirdre Raftery, Barney O’Reilly and Eoin Daly, whose very open and supportive attitude over the years has been all the more appreciated as I  was aware of not coming from the ‘inner circle’ of Irish academia.

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Preface and acknowledgements

I am grateful to all involved at Manchester University Press for their work in the production of this book, as well as to the three reviewers for their remarks on my book proposal. Many thanks to Andrew Johnston, whose keen eye for detail improved this work immeasurably, and for the support of my research team (RÉMÉLICE) at the University of Orléans. All my love and thanks to Juliette and Kathleen and to John, for everything.

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Introduction

Religion, identity and citizenship in schools: the Irish case The aim of this book is to examine a striking characteristic of the Irish State: the control of its education system by religious and private bodies, which entails an analysis of the place of religion in schools and its contemporary social, political and ideological implications in the Republic of Ireland. The chosen perspective is essentially political and ideological, with a study of education policies as they reflect government choices and of the standpoints and views of those involved in the educational sphere. This will be complemented with an analysis of the public debate and of the fluctuations of public opinion on the issue. The current Irish education system is commonly described as denominational and based on religious segregation. As the Catholic Church has remained the owner and manager of the vast majority of the so-called ‘national’ primary schools in the Republic (which are otherwise mostly financed by the State), Catholic schools act as state schools to all intents and purposes. The increasing diversity of the school population since the mid 1990s, as a result of socio-cultural changes within the Republic as well as of immigration, has highlighted the problematic aspect of the double nature and function of these schools. It has led some to question the legitimacy of the structural link between the Catholic Church and the great majority of schools, which has even been described as a form of cultural imperialism in recent years. From an international perspective, contemporary developments in the Republic of Ireland are all the more interesting as Irish society struggles to come to terms with a self-image that may reflect these. It now has to try and reconcile its vision of itself as a colonised people (which, until recently, had felt the need to assert its cultural specificity through its schools) and the new position of the Republic of Ireland as a de-facto post-imperial country, the result of its fifteen-year economic boom and of the consequent substantial immigration for the first time in its contemporary history. The recession the country has been going through since 2008 does not fundamentally alter this new situation, even if there has been a return to a negative migratory

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ratio. As former immigrants and Irish people leave the State, others choose to stay, and, more to the point, the social developments of the past thirty years have far exceeded the strictly demographic changes. The issue of the relationship between religion, culture and schooling is of international significance. Ireland’s case also provides an opportunity, especially with regard to the political use of concepts of interculturalism and pluralism, civic or ethnic citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, to reflect on this issue as it may affect any democratic, open society. Contemporary political, social and cultural developments (from Indepen‑ dence and Partition to the economic boom and the recent phenomena of secularisation and immigration, via the Northern Ireland conflict and European integration) have progressively led the Irish State to put into question the role of cultural transmission that had been assigned as a priority to Irish schools in the wake of Independence. The definition of Irish identity to be transmitted had been founded on the Catholic-Gaelic cultural nationalism that had developed in the nineteenth century in reaction to British domination and to the unionist discourse. Despite this gradual evolution, the dominant perception of a homogenous majority in Ireland and a form of religious ethnic nationalism have continued to colour current debates on the place of the Catholic Church and of religious and cultural minorities in Irish society in general and in the education system in particular. A number of authors have charted the significant decrease in the social and symbolic power of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland over the past thirty years.1 According to John Coakley, this transitional process is leading to the gradual replacement of an exclusive ethnic nationalism by a more inclusive civic nationalism.2 The school, which may be seen not only as a traditional vehicle of identity and cultural transmission but also, on a wider scale, as a microcosm of most major social and political debates, seems to be a particularly apt place for an examination of this process and of some of its practical aspects. To what extent can the field of education in the Republic of Ireland be seen as reflecting such a transition? The religious dimension of the dominant conception of Irish identity, which was made explicit in education policy discourses as well as in the contents and objectives of the school curricula in the first decades after Independence, has now all but disappeared from official publications defining current education policy, but it remains very much present in the actual structure of the education system. While a number of significant developments in education tend to confirm John Coakley’s analysis, this major element of permanence appears in direct contradiction with it. Exploring the discourses and practices of those actively involved in the field of education (the State, the Churches, the religious and non-religious personnel involved in managing the system, teaching and parent organisations – while the place of children among these various interests will also be considered) in relation to the issue of religion in schools in the Irish State will help highlight some contemporary contradictions and understand the nature of the resulting tensions.

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In Ireland, as in Great Britain, the issue of discrimination resulting from the historical place of particular religions within the school system is most often viewed from a ‘communitarian’ or ‘majority/minority’ perspective, that is to say by focusing on the discrimination that might affect religious minorities and on the real or supposed effects of school segregation from this viewpoint. In the Republic, it has thus been established that, until recently, the existence of non-Catholic minorities was partly ignored, tolerated or considered as more or less of a problem in the educational context. The Protestant minorities, while they remained at the margins of the Irish State’s self-perception, nevertheless had their own parallel network of schools, as is still the case today. But the issue of the social and cultural inclusion of minority groups in Irish education has now become a much wider one, as has been recognised in recent research. Beyond the question of more or less recognised minorities (including the growing number of people with no religious affiliation in the country), the present work will look at the place of each child, whatever his or her socio-cultural origins and the religious convictions of his or her parents, in the school system and in Irish society as a whole. The choice has been made here to envisage the issue of discrimination by focusing first and foremost on children as individual human beings, without merely reducing them to the cultural and religious majority or minority groupings they belong to by virtue of their birth. Each child should be afforded equality of treatment and status, and each child’s personal, social and cultural identity is seen here as a work in progress and not a set of prearranged or predetermined labels. This does not amount to ignoring their respective origins and experiences or to imagining some kind of abstract uniformity. Rather, each child is seen here as both the product of a variety of influences and a person actively involved in his or her own making and not as a passive recipient that one might fill by ‘educating’ one way or another. The debate on the inclusive/exclusive concept of Irish identity and on its practical implementation in terms of cultural and religious transmission in schools has taken on a new dimension since the mid 1990s with the arrival of new immigrants, but this may be seen as just another step in a long-term process. The issue of exclusion was one that affected various minorities long before this new phenomenon. Even when adopting a group perspective, it has become obvious to all that there is now a growing number of children who do not fit the traditional image of the Catholic Irish, the children of immigrant parents representing only one group  – itself widely heterogeneous  – among others. The traditional vision of national identity derived from Irish cultural nationalism was by definition exclusive, to the extent that only Catholic inhabitants who were perceived as being of Gaelic ancestry could be deemed fully Irish (apart from those individual Protestant nationalist heroes who became honorary members of the nation). As John Coakley writes, the conception of national identity that may be described as ‘civic’ is more inclusive or at least open to a higher degree of inclusion, as it is founded on the concept of citizenship, which may encompass all inhabitants who participate in a given society

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as opposed to being applied only to a group based on a set of pre-established criteria of belonging. From this perspective, the term ‘inclusion’ can refer both to the collective dimension of social/national cohesion and to the individual dimension of citizenship equality. As Kathleen Lynch shows, full inclusion has to be underpinned by the notion of equality: a child may only feel fully included in the school group if he/she is considered as equal to the others, without any form of discrimination.3 The basic hypothesis here is that a true (search for) equality would recognise and respect individual difference, whereas the notion of respect for diversity does not necessarily include the idea of equality and privileges difference over commonality as its basic premise.4 In this context, it must of course be stated that the religious dimension is but one aspect of the issue of equality and inclusion in schools. The socio-economic dimension remains crucial in this respect, as Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge have shown in the Irish context.5 The issue of the discrepancy between the vision of Irish identity and culture conveyed by the school system and the existence of children of diverse socio-cultural and religious backgrounds in Ireland arose long before the 1990s, with the first wide-ranging political debate on education and Irish identity in the Republic already taking place in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, it was specifically linked to the conflict in Northern Ireland and to the exclusive, and hence potentially conflictual, character of Irish identity that was then dominant in schools, and most marked in school history. From the 1970s onwards, the question of how to cater for children from families who did not belong to the main religions with their own school networks came up sporadically. Calls for alternatives to the existing structure remained isolated, however, and these matters were only brought to the fore with the arrival of immigrants, giving rise for the first time to a national debate on Irish identity in schools, on equality of access to education and on the existence of discrimination. The public debate has essentially focused on the treatment of (perceived) minorities in the school system  – minorities that have been described as ‘ethnic’, religious or non-religious minorities, but also Irish Travellers, recently assimilated to an indigenous ‘ethnic’ minority. In this work I will also focus on the national debate on the place of religion in the Irish school system for its own sake, as it appears revealing of the changing Irish society and highlights issues most contemporary democratic countries have to face one way or another. Catholic viewpoints and democratic perspectives An overview of recent writings in Ireland on the relationship between schools and religion in Ireland will help provide a general insight into the issues at stake. The fact that it is possible to divide them into distinct categories founded on different premises is in itself revealing of the nature of the current national debate. Indeed, Irish writings on the subject may be divided into two main approaches, one emerging from the existing Christian educational structures

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and trying to preserve their essential characteristics, while the other attempts to offer an overall critical analysis. In the first approach, a prolific ‘Catholic camp’, with several books on the Catholic school and on the teaching of religion in Ireland in the past decade, has tried to take stock of the social changes, while generally adopting a defensive stance. These writings thus justify the existence and importance of the network of Catholic schools, with some nuances; they attempt not only to redefine but also to reassert the specific character of these schools; and they see the notion of inclusion as a natural part of the message of Christian tolerance. Most of these works have been published by the Irish religious publishing companies Veritas and Dominican Publications, the former under the direct responsibility of the Irish Bishops’ Conference. For the most part, their authors are involved in teaching Religious Education (RE) to future teachers of RE in secondary schools, at the Mater Dei Institute, as is the case of Kevin Williams, author of Faith and the Nation: Religion, Culture and Schooling in Ireland,6 or James Norman, author of Ethos and Education in Ireland,7 or at the teacher-training colleges of St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and Mary Immaculate College, others are priests or members of either the Catholic hierarchy or a religious order. By way of illustration, Kevin Williams mentions in his book what he calls the ‘liberal’ discourse, but he does not himself offer any critical questioning on the legitimacy of the Irish State’s continued acceptance of its role as a promoter of religion beyond presenting its main legal manifestations as a set of facts. Indeed, the main question that Williams would like to answer positively in his book is the following:  ‘Can Ireland’s Christian tradition accommodate the demands of diversity?’ (The question appears on the back cover.) The chosen wording of what sounds very much like a rhetorical question places the author’s whole argument squarely in the perspective of a Christian Ireland, and, as a result, it amounts to an unquestioning justification of the bases of the system. Williams writes as a defender of the existing system of which he is a part and of the specific religious identity of Ireland as he perceives it; his object is to explore potential strategies of adaptation of the education system to the increasing socio-cultural diversity in the Republic of Ireland so as to preserve the characteristics that seem essential to him in this Christian perspective, rather than to offer a global critical analysis that might lead him to question its foundations. Other authors in the same vein generally defend the political and cultural status quo in education, even if many among them are prepared to envisage limited changes. This is the case of a more nuanced analysis by David Tuohy, a Jesuit priest, who departed from a strictly Christian perspective in Denominational Education and Politics by looking at the wider political and public debate, although he devotes a significant part of the book to Catholic education and church views.8 Its international focus is limited to a descriptive overview of existing practice in other European countries, with the implication that Ireland should find its own path in this diversity of practices, rather than to a critical analysis of these situations from an international, rights-based perspective. The author seems

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to distance himself from the concept of democracy by presenting it as a strictly ‘Western’ idea, in direct contradiction with much of the focus and work of the United Nations (UN).9 Although Tuohy discusses what he calls ‘the language of rights’, there is no mention of related literature by law specialists in Ireland (see below). There is also no mention of children’s rights as distinct from parental rights. In his concluding comments, when envisaging the transfer of a proportion of schools from church to state control, the author assumes that the main challenge for the State is necessarily about providing choice for parents, and he insists on the ownership rights of the Church and on its ‘historic’ investment in the system.10 Other Veritas publications may include one or two more critical contributions, as is the case, for instance, in From Present to Future: Catholic Education in Ireland for the New Century (2006), co-edited by James Cassin, Secretary of the Irish Bishops’ Education Commission and Eithne Woulfe, of the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI).11 Most of the contributions in this work derived from a conference that gathered the various Catholic interest groups in Ireland. As Bishop Leo O’Reilly had indicated in his introduction to the conference, the book was clearly destined to help ‘plan and develop policies guaranteeing the future of our schools’,12 but it included an article that jarred somewhat with the general tenor. In what was in fact a reprinting of a 1991 article, Joseph Dunne (a specialist of the philosophy of childhood and education at St Patrick’s College) perfectly summed up the two main perspectives described here in his first sentence:  ‘One might address educational issues from a Catholic viewpoint, or again one might address them from the perspective of a democratic state in a modern, pluralist society.’13 Dunne, although he announced that he was going to take into account both viewpoints and examine the tensions between them, offered a global critical reflection, in an academic mode, which could not be reduced to a specific cultural or religious angle. It is his conclusion, finally justifying the maintenance of the denominational system, albeit with a number of reservations, that largely explains the inclusion of his article into the conference proceedings. In that ambivalent conclusion (he also envisaged the possibility of the Catholic Church completely withdrawing from schools in a ‘three-option scenario’), Joseph Dunne nonetheless expressed a view which was somewhat divergent within the academic domain – broadly qualified as ‘democratic’ – by comparison with the majority of writings on the topic in the past few years. In this respect, the fact that the article dates back to 1991 should also be kept in mind. The second approach or category of writings on this general topic in Ireland is made up of articles, book chapters and books, most of which have been written by academics. Apart from the training centres for future RE teachers like the Mater Dei Institute, most of the Irish third-level establishments are not under the patronage or control of the Christian Churches, the university of Maynooth and St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, or Maynooth College, a private Catholic institution, having gone their separate ways in 1997. The teacher-training centres are somewhere in between, retaining denominational

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status but with institutional links with Irish universities. Some of the authors who could be described as belonging to the ‘democratic’ academic tradition work in these teacher-training centres. The writings in this second category deal with educational policies, structures and contents, or with the philosophy of childhood and education. Recent works in the field of sociology, such as Diversity at School or Primary Voices: Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools, have focused specifically on issues of diversity, equality and discrimination in primary schools.14 There has also been an emerging literature from law experts, looking at the constitutional and legal backgrounds and critically examining the Irish situation from the perspective of international human-rights standards.15 Their general critical approach is founded on a belief in the importance of equal rights in a democratic society. Research by these authors has an international scope, and the present work may be seen as part of the same overall framework. In a more or less direct way, many of the writers working on education policy or the sociology of education in the Republic of Ireland put into question a segregated, largely denominational system that allows for various forms of discrimination and exclusion, an approach that goes against the dominant political discourse in the State. Perhaps partly as a result of their chosen angles, even if they do point to a number of its weaknesses, they have not gone so far as to offer an overall critical analysis of the denominational characteristics of the Irish education system. The only works that have addressed this issue directly, Alison Mawhinney’s Freedom of Religion and Schools:  The Case of Ireland, A  Failure to Protect International Human Rights Standards and Eoin Daly’s Religion, Law and the Irish State (especially Chapters 4 and 5, with a cogent analysis of inequality and school choice within the patronage model), were written by law specialists.16 In a book examining the major ideological shifts in the field of education in the Republic in the twentieth century, Denis O’Sullivan expresses surprise at the absence of a unified discourse that would take the argument on the weaknesses and drawbacks of the Irish education system to its logical conclusion.17 The present work is an attempt at bringing together the various, often isolated but mostly convergent, strands of existing critical thinking and exploring the implications of international theoretical and comparative reflections for the Irish situation. The aim is to take the overall argument, if not to its end, at least one step further, so as to be able to offer some logical conclusions as far as education policy is concerned. The contributions of researchers in different fields can be viewed in a more global perspective. The present work is also an opportunity to highlight the reflections of Irish authors who have not managed to make themselves heard against the backdrop of the dominant political and religious discourse on education policy in the Irish context. Conversely, some elements of the Irish situation can be shown to have international resonance. In 2002, Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge noted that the potential links between children’s rights (which have become the focus of more work in the fields of law, sociology and philosophy of childhood in the past twenty years) and the great educational debates had as yet been little explored.18 Most Irish

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authors broach the issue of school and religion by looking at the representation of religious diversity in schools and found their arguments on issues of discrimination between religious groups or communities in society and on the question of the parents’ citizenship rights and equality. A few authors (such as Desmond M. Clarke, Mawhinney and Daly in the fields of law and philosophy and Dympna Devine as a sociologist of education19) have started to focus on these links, but it is still perhaps this problematic of children’s rights and how they relate to education policies that remains least developed in Ireland as well as at an international level, and it is one of the main aspects I would like to explore in relation to the religious issue. In an argument founded on citizenship equality and respect for human rights in a democratic state and an open society, it seems essential to also fully take into account respect for children’s human rights in the educational context, even if it means indirectly opening the Pandora’s box of the potential tension between the rights of parents and those of their children in matters of religious beliefs. In his book, Denis O’Sullivan draws both a parallel and a distinction between two groups in the field of research on Irish education policies, those he calls ‘cultural strangers’ (such as Canadian authors Donald H. Akenson and E. Brian Titley) and the Irish proponents of a ‘cultural counter-current’ whom he calls ‘cultural contrarians’, because they chose to set themselves against the dominant cultural discourse in the Republic of Ireland.20 It seems to me that it is possible, and perhaps it is also time, to go beyond this dichotomy between ‘strangers’ (and quasi-strangers as it were, for the ‘cultural contrarians’) and ‘cultural natives’ in critical analyses of Irish education structures and policies. O’Sullivan himself mostly refers in this context to 1970s and 1980s publications. Irish academics who work on education policies today have an international academic culture; many strive to look at ‘the local within the global’, and they recognise, as Jim Deegan puts it, the necessity of comparative and ‘paradigmatically cosmopolitan’ research.21 There is obviously still a certain dominant cultural discourse to be found in the media and main political circles, and this book also aims at highlighting some of its characteristics, but many Irish researchers have emancipated themselves enough from it to be able to develop their own critical discourse. That is why there is no question now of ‘foreign’ researchers posing as sermonisers in any way, as authors like Titley and Akenson were sometimes reproached with doing,22 and it has become much more a matter of common, associative research contributing to the necessarily international debate on Irish realities and policies in the field of education. It remains true however that the fact of working within the system – and often being personally involved in it – may inhibit one’s critical approach at times, and not being subject to this may still be one of the advantages of an outsider’s view. Denis O’Sullivan explains the hitherto very limited, or even counterproductive, impact of writings going against the dominant political-cultural discourse by the fact that they have not managed to go beyond academia, whereas practitioners of education and religious actors in the field continued to support and convey the dominant ‘indigenous’ discourse.23 Here

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again the situation can be said to have evolved significantly in the past few years, at least as far as the teachers themselves are concerned. Beyond the academic world, the main Irish teaching organisations, and especially the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), which represents the vast majority of primary-school teachers, have opened themselves to international influences and largely taken on board the defence of human rights, support for the development of intercultural education and the notions of equality and inclusion as they are understood and discussed internationally. Many Irish educational actors have now appropriated a critical discourse on the existing education system, and the debate is now taking place within the system. After setting out the historical background to the place of religion and to the patronage system in Irish schools today, I will focus on how the political, social and cultural developments since the 1960s have led to a calling into question of the traditional, dominant discourse on the country’s Catholic-Christian identity and to rising political tensions, between a communitarian trend that allows for the persistence and legitimisation of the privileged position of Christianity in the education system and a discourse founded on a renewal of the republican ideal. The two following chapters will be devoted to a study of the main trends in education policy in the past fifteen years as they appear in the Department of Education’s official publications and in the school curricula, and of the way these trends may reflect the tensions outlined earlier. Chapter 5 examines the main structural characteristics of the Irish education system and the extent to which the Catholic Church has remained the structuring institution in the field, with a parallel presentation of the Irish political and educational debate since 2000 on the need for structural reform in the face of religious and cultural diversity. The last two chapters focus on the modes of legitimisation of ongoing discriminatory practices related to religion in the Irish education system. Notes 1 Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland (Dublin:  University College Dublin Press, 1998); Tom Inglis, ‘Catholic Church, Religious Capital and Symbolic Domination’, in Michael Bøss and Eamon Maher (eds), Engaging Modernity: Readings of Irish Politics, Culture and Literature at the Turn of the Century (Dublin: Veritas, 2003), pp. 43–70; Enda McDonagh, ‘Church-State Relations in an Independent Ireland’, in James P. Mackey and Enda McDonagh (eds), Religion and Politics in Ireland at the Turn of the Millennium (Dublin: Columba, 2003), pp. 41–63, at p. 63. 2 John Coakley, ‘Religion, National Identity and Political Change in Modern Ireland’, Irish Political Studies, 17:1 (2002), 4–28, at p. 25. 3 Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge, Equality and Power in Schools:  Redistribution, Recognition and Representation (London:  RoutledgeFalmer, 2002); John Baker, Kathleen Lynch, Sara Cantillon and Judy Walsh, Equality:  From Theory to Action, 2004 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 159–61.

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4 For a discussion on the complex relationship between the concepts of equality and diversity, see Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007). Also Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). 5 Anne Lodge and Kathleen Lynch (eds), Diversity at School (Dublin:  Institute of Public Administration for the Equality Authority, 2004), p. 7. 6 Kevin Williams, Faith and the Nation:  Religion, Culture and Schooling in Ireland (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 2005). 7 James Norman, Ethos and Education in Ireland (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). 8 David Tuohy, Denominational Education and Politics:  Ireland in a European Context (Dublin: Veritas, 2013). 9 Tuohy, Denominational Education and Politics, p. 80. 10 Tuohy, Denominational Education and Politics, p. 335. 11 Eithne Woulfe and James Cassin (eds), From Present to Future: Catholic Education in Ireland for the New Century (Dublin: Veritas, 2006). 12 Woulfe and Cassin, From Present to Future, p. 7. 13 Joseph Dunne, ‘The Catholic School, the Democratic State and Civil Society: Exploring the Tensions’, in Eithne Woulfe and James Cassin (eds), From Present to Future: Catholic Education in Ireland for the New Century (Dublin:  Veritas, 2006), pp. 190–229, at p. 190. 14 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School; Jim Deegan, Dympna Devine and Anne Lodge (eds), Primary Voices:  Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2004). 15 Alison Mawhinney, Freedom of Religion and Schools: The Case of Ireland, a Failure to Protect International Human Rights Standards (Saarbrücken:  VDM Verlag, 2009); Eoin Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State: The Constitutional Framework in Context (Dublin:  Clarus Press, 2012); Dympna Glendenning, Religion, Education and the Law: A Comparative Approach (Haywards Heath, Tottel Publishing, 2008). 16 Mawhinney, Freedom of Religion and Schools; Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State. 17 Denis O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education since the 1950s:  Policy, Paradigms and Power (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2005), p. 487. 18 Lynch and Lodge, Equality and Power in Schools, p. 10. 19 Desmond M. Clarke, Church and State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1985); Dympna Devine, Children, Power and Schooling:  How Childhood Is Structured in the Primary School (Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2003). 20 See O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 481–90. 21 Ciaran Sugrue and Jim Gleeson, ‘Signposts and Silences: Situating the Local Within the Global’, in Ciaran Sugrue (ed.), Curriculum and Ideology:  Irish Experiences, International Perspectives (Dublin:  Liffey Press, 2004), pp.  269-313; Jim Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise”:  Children and Diversity in Statutory and Policy Discourses in Ireland’, in Jim Deegan, Dympna Devine and Anne Lodge (eds), Primary Voices: Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2004), pp. 225–44, at p. 239. 22 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 487–8. 23 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 489–90.

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The legacy of Catholic cultural nationalism and religious segregation

The historical overview presented in this chapter seeks to facilitate an understanding of the major characteristics of the present school system in the Republic of Ireland, not only by giving an insight into the main elements of permanence and change but also by showing that certain contemporary aspects of the link between religion and education in the Republic were introduced more recently than is often believed. The main structural characteristics of the present system reflect nineteenth-century developments, but it was only in the 1960s that the Irish State officialised the religious nature of the educational system, at the very moment when a deep-seated transformation of Irish society was about to distance it from the distinctive features at the root of the Irish Free State’s cultural nationalism. From an ideological viewpoint, it is necessary to go back first to the new orientations in educational policy after Independence, and then to the Constitution of 1937, in order to grasp the continuing importance of religion in the Republic of Ireland’s educational system in terms of structure and educational content. The relationship between society and religion may partake both of the theory of functionality and that of conflict.1 After the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Catholic religion could be perceived as an element of social cohesion in a society that tended to see itself as essentially homogeneous: the educational system could be considered as both reflecting and transmitting this. At the same time, the parallel networks of Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist schools that had developed in the nineteenth century still existed, and there seemed to be a consensus on school segregation on a religious basis, as the Protestant Churches were also intent on retaining their schools. Anne Lodge and Kathleen Lynch have pointed at the twin developments of a fabricated cultural homogeneity and an institutionalisation of differences through the organisational modalities of the education system. They explain that a ‘deeply consensual culture’ dominated the debates on education in the Republic of Ireland for a long time and compare this to the attempt to create an image of cultural and political homogeneity that prevailed during

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the first decades after Independence, despite the fact that Ireland has never been homogeneous, culturally or politically.2 This fabricated homogeneity, an integral part of the new state’s project of cultural and political cohesion, was thus cultivated through education to the point that it acquired the status of something indisputable, with any assertion of existing differences henceforth taking on a subversive character. These differences, whether linked to social class, special needs, cultural issues, matters of belief or other factors, were thus subsumed or denied at the cultural level, while some were institutionalised in the very structures of the system. Despite important developments since the 1970s, the Irish educational system remains one of the most segregated in Europe, according to criteria of ability (including special needs), culture (for a long time, Travellers’ children were educated in special schools), gender (many schools still cater for only one sex) and religion.3 School control and religious segregation, 1831–1922 The current model of school management is directly derived from nineteenth-century structures. A national network of primary schools was set up by the British authorities, under the impetus given by Lord Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in 1831 (about forty years before England and Wales). A Board for National Education was assigned the task of ensuring the smooth running of this network and of devising basic curricula. From the start, the Churches were an integral part of the system; they were represented on the Board, which was also composed of members of the judiciary and the universities. The religious composition of the Board was a fundamental characteristic: after 1860, in response to Catholic criticism, the government increased the number of board members from fourteen to twenty, half of whom were Catholics.4 A Board for Intermediary Education, in charge of secondary education between elementary and higher education (as opposed to technical education, which had a council of its own), was created in 1878 and also comprised an equal number of Protestants and Catholics.5 The authorities invited the existing networks of denominational schools to join the system and to adopt a form of shared control. The Act of 1831 envisaged schools where children from different religious backgrounds would be educated together. In theory, pupils were supposed to be given common secular instruction and separate religious tuition (‘combined moral and literary instruction and separate religious instruction’), both indicated by small boards hung up in front of the classroom or removed depending on the lesson.6 The stated aim was to set up an elementary system of education for all, on the principle of the common school, with a view to promoting the interests of all children in Ireland.7 At first a certain number of schools complied with the rule, but these provisions were soon criticised by the Churches, which undertook to adapt the system to their own demands. The Presbyterian Church was the first to oppose the system and to obtain changes that allowed it nonetheless to benefit from

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state funding. It was soon followed by the Church of Ireland, which decided to set up its own board of education, the Church Education Society, in 1839.8 The very existence of a parallel system gathering a majority of the children of the members of the Church of Ireland reinforced religious segregation, since many National Schools found themselves catering only to children of Catholic parents. Financial difficulties eventually led the Church of Ireland to seek a compromise for its schools within the national system in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the middle of the century, while the system was still nominally non-denominational, religious segregation was more and more widespread and the schools were controlled in practice by the Churches.9 To start with, the Catholic Church hierarchy tolerated a system that represented considerable progress compared with the Catholic population’s previous predicament in the field of education. Bishop Doyle, especially, spoke several times in favour of a system of education gathering all Irish children, Catholic and Protestant. This approach was rejected, however, by Paul Cullen, Archbishop of Armagh from 1849, then of Dublin from 1851. He had recently returned from Rome, where opposition to ‘mixed’ education – from a religious point of view – and to any ‘interference’ of the State in education had become more intransigent. Archbishop Cullen launched an aggressive campaign against the system of national education, which resulted in the affirmation of the Catholic nature of the schools managed by the Catholic Church, even when they were part of the national system. Meanwhile, the Christian Brothers, who had managed a few hundred schools even before the introduction of the 1831 Act, soon opted out of the system. It was only after the founding of the Irish Free State that their schools came back into the national system.10 It seems that Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers in Ireland, supported the integration of their schools in the national system and that the reason for opting out lay less in the supposed anti-Catholicism of the inspectors of the National Board of Education (as was assumed by some) and more in internecine divisions that stemmed from the opposition of a new generation of Brothers, who were more nationalistic and insisted on preserving their autonomy.11 The Board for National Education set up a non-denominational teacher-training centre in the 1830s in Dublin, Marlborough Street Training College, as well as special schools (called model schools) for the training of would-be teachers. The Churches campaigned, however, for the setting up of denominational centres. The government eventually gave in and accepted to fund such centres from 1883 onwards. By 1903, there were seven training centres in Ireland, five of which were Catholic, one non-denominational (at Marlborough Street) and one Anglican, the Church of Ireland College in Dublin.12 A large number of teachers, however, did not get any specific training at the beginning of the twentieth century.13 The college in Marlborough Street closed down when the Irish Free State was founded, and after Partition only the denominational training centres remained in the South. Two of the Catholic training colleges have since closed, but two more were established in the course of the twentieth century, so there remain five centres in the Republic of

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Ireland, all privately owned but funded by the State.14 Four are in the Catholic sphere of influence: St Patrick’s College of Education, Drumcondra, in Dublin, and Mary Immaculate College in Limerick (the two most important in terms of size); St Mary’s College of Education, Marino, Dublin (the Christian Brothers’ centre); and the Froebel College of Education, Blackrock, Dublin (founded by the Dominicans’ congregation). The fifth is the Church of Ireland College in Rathmines, Dublin. Most primary schools in the national system, called ‘National Schools’, were locally run by clergymen but funded by the State for the greatest part and were thus compelled to abide by the regulations and curricula issued by the Board for National Education. The schoolbooks published by the Board were not mandatory, but their low price contributed to their wide distribution; moreover, all textbooks or readers used in the schools had to be officially approved.15 Secondary education, for its part, was in a critical state at the start of the twentieth century, and a thorough reform was envisaged in 1919 with the MacPherson Education Bill, which would have brought about the equivalent of a ministry for education as well as local education boards destined to contribute to the upkeep and funding of schools. Also planned were a system of public funding for school meals and textbooks and a system of scholarships, as well as improved pay and working conditions for teachers. The Catholic Church at once expressed its opposition to the Bill. On the contrary, the Protestant Churches approved it, as did the main teachers’ union, the INTO, most of whose members were Catholic. Some members of the clergy went so far as to accuse the teachers of betraying their country.16 The Irish Nationalist Party deliberately dragged out the debate on the Bill, which was eventually withdrawn in December 1920.17 The demands of the Christian Churches and the conciliatory stance of the State thus led to a de-facto segregated primary and secondary education system, although the principle of schools open to all children, regardless of their parents’ religion, remained in force. This segregation was by no means put into question when the Irish Free State was founded; on the contrary, it was progressively institutionalised. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, the Catholic school had come to represent a close alliance between education and religion and between the majority of the Irish population and the Church, and this alliance was sealed by the new Irish State.18 This development was no doubt inevitable, given the close relationship between the Catholic religion and Irish nationalism at the start of the twentieth century,19 yet it nevertheless met with resistance. Some voices, albeit in a minority but from well-known people, such as those of Michael Davitt and Padraig Pearse among the major Irish nationalist figures of the 1880–1920  years, spoke against church control of the National School system. Michael Davitt, a staunch Catholic, publicly spoke against denominational education – alongside Alfred Webb, a Quaker – only to be reproved by John Redmond, then head of the Irish Parliamentary Party, to which both belonged (although Redmond reproached them for having expressed that opinion in public, not for holding

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it).20 Contradicting Bishop Edward O’Dwyer in a letter in the Freeman’s Journal, Michael Davitt advocated secular education, declaring: Make no mistake about it, my lord Bishop, … Democracy is about to rule in these countries; and if you are wise you will cease to uphold the class dominance, in state and in Universities, of the Dukes of Norfolk and Lords Dunraven, and try to find in government by the people the best and surest safety for the religious and educational rights and privileges of all faiths.21

For his part, Padraig Pearse spoke in favour of control over education by the Irish people itself and criticised the interference of the Catholic Church in education several times.22 He accused the Christian Brothers of sacrificing the good of the Irish education system on ‘a cross of monetary interests’ and of blindly following a narrow, traditional conception of education.23 Pearse considered that religious interests had been upheld to the detriment of the social and educational needs of children and saw to it that St Enda’s, the school he founded in 1908, escaped the intellectual and administrative control of the Church, although it was still considered a Catholic school.24 Delegation of state educational responsibility to the Churches After the Ministry for Education was established in 1924, the basic structure of the three main sectors of education (primary, secondary and technical) remained unchanged. Most of the ministry’s civil servants had already been at their posts before Independence.25 The new state made no attempt to increase its control over schools or to involve local authorities in their management, leaving the Catholic Church in charge of the vast majority of schools. The school system as a whole was not among the priorities of the new state, except for the decision to stamp the Gaelic-Catholic vision of Ireland into the new curricula. As Donald H.  Akenson has noted, educational issues were rarely discussed in the Dáil over the first three decades after Independence, with only questions about the teaching of Irish and about compulsory schooling stirring debate now and again.26 Successive ministers for education in fact adopted a position of support for the Churches’ role in education, limiting the State to a ‘subsidiary’ role, an attitude reflected in the unchanged structure of the system.27 In the 1950s, Minister for Education Richard Mulcahy compared himself to a plumber whose function was essentially to link things up, a way of acknowledging the predominant position of the Churches, according to Louis O’Flaherty: ‘it was not too long since a Minister for Education had described himself as merely akin to the “dungaree man” who “will take a knock out of the pipes and will link up everything” ’.28 Until the 1960s, it was taken for granted by political figures that they would systematically consult – and most often defer to – the Catholic hierarchy for any important government decision on education.29 During those decades, Dáil members regularly waxed lyrical about the outstanding contribution of religious orders to the education of Irish children and often insisted on how

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much the State owed the Church and its orders, building up the myth of a state that was unable to take on the task of national education for lack of funds and that was thus indebted to the Catholic Church for being prepared to do it instead. For its part, the Catholic Church saw education as one of its main missions and considered that its educational role took precedence over that of the State. Paul Brennan notes that the Church’s historical position of authority over its schools was further buttressed by the 1929 papal encyclical Divini Illius Magistri on the Catholic school:  ‘according to this document the role of the Catholic Church in education is derived from a supernatural title conferred by God on her alone, transcending in authority and validity any title of the natural order’.30 Education is seen as the mission of the Church first and foremost, with church rights in this area deemed superior to those of any earthly secular power. Family rights are also seen as deriving from God and thus meant to take precedence over those of the State. According to the encyclical, the State’s duty was to protect the superior rights of parents and Church. The same document explicitly criticised the educational theories of the time on children’s development and autonomy, including the notion of child-centred education and thus the embryonic reflection on children’s needs and children’s rights. The encyclical also condemned interdenominational and mixed schools as well as so-called ‘neutral’ or secular schools. Paul Brennan argues that the strategy of the Catholic Church in Ireland led it to privilege its aim of control over certain positions of principle. For example, the priority given to church control of schools led the Catholic Church to oppose the State’s first attempts at introducing free education for all children in the 1930s.31 Evoking the influence of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962–65) on the Catholic Church’s readiness to adopt a more open attitude to its role in Irish society, Denis O’Sullivan argues that in the early 1970s the Church began to question its own discourse of authority over education.32 A 1973 report on the future role of religious in education (the Future Involvement of Religious in Education [FIRE] Report) reveals an intense debate within the Church as to its exact role in education.33 The report was put together by a working group of both religious and lay people at the joint initiative of the Catholic Church hierarchy and the Conference of Religious Superiors, and it was not meant for public reading. Its authors took the following stance: Religious schools are less and less needed to provide a service in education:  the state will increasingly care for that aspect. Many religious schools now do little more than duplicate, more efficiently perhaps, what could be done by lay men. They do not show the strength which could characterise religious-run schools, either in serving those in greatest need or in sensitivity to the real needs of the children now for the first time seeking post-primary education. … The recommendations are suggested as the only means of at once collaborating in the service of national needs, recognising the legitimate aspirations of lay secondary teachers and their role in moral and religious education, and finally ensuring the survival of Catholic schools in the pluralist system.34

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Such declarations were a far cry from the dogma of the superior educational mission of the Church. They also heralded the Catholic Church’s future strategy of positioning itself as an ‘educational service provider’ among others in the Republic of Ireland.35 The introduction of free post-primary schooling in 1967, along with the creation of the first comprehensive and community schools at secondary level, was a landmark in the State’s assertion of autonomy from the Catholic Church in educational matters. It was carried out despite the outright opposition of religious school patrons, who still ran the vast majority of secondary schools. As we will see, however, the Churches later obtained the right to be directly involved in the management of these new schools. Around the same time, however, Patrick Hillery, Minister for Education from 1959 to 1965, decided to officialise the de-facto structural situation by explicitly recognising denominational schools in the Rules for National Schools in 1965. He actually went further than what the Churches themselves had been asking for, by asserting for the first time that the national system as a whole was of a denominational nature: ‘the State provides for free primary education for children in national schools, and gives explicit recognition to the denominational character of these schools’.36 The timing of that governmental decision was all the more striking as it went against the grain of contemporaneous changes in attitudes to minority rights and democracy in education. The chosen formulation was never put into question, and the 1965 Rules for National Schools have remained valid to this day (only one particular clause, which emphasised the importance of religious instruction, Rule 68, was officially abolished by Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan in January 2016, in what was essentially a symbolic move, not affecting the system as a whole in any concrete way, as both the Minister and the Catholic hierarchy were at pains to point out.37 Even if the very principle of a common education had largely been discarded in practice, it was thus only in 1965 that this principle was officially abandoned. Indeed, until that date, the Rules stipulated that ‘the system of National Education affords combined secular and separate religious instruction to children of all religions, and no attempt is made to interfere with the religious tenets of any pupils’.38 As a consequence of the political choices made between Independence and the 1960s, the Irish situation is unique in Europe, the country having no state or public education system as such at primary level. Under the patronage system, the State was not even meant to create any primary schools directly, as this was seen to be the remit of patrons. Until the early 1970s, those patrons were all religious organisations that both owned and managed the overwhelming majority of primary schools. In the course of the 1970s, groups of parents who wanted an alternative to denominational (and separate) schooling obtained the right to open schools, but they had to do so through the channel of an umbrella body called Educate Together that could be recognised as a school patron by the State under the current system. Educate Together started off as a group of parents and educationalists but

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was turned into a private company (with charitable status) in 1998.39 More recently, parents who wanted to open all-Irish schools (or Gaelscoileanna) outside the officially recognised Gaeltacht areas had to go a similar route.40 Most of these new schools, however, opened under either Catholic or ‘interdenominational’ patronage (i.e. under the joint aegis of the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland). For many years, obstacles were put in the path of primary schools not directly managed by the Churches: founders had to provide a pre-enrolment list and set up a private company for the purpose of creating and managing the school, and they had to convince the State of its viability for two years before receiving any public funding. Most of those obstacles have been progressively lifted,41 but financial inequalities long remained evident especially as far as Educate Together schools were concerned,42 the main difficulty being the very concrete issue of accommodation. Up to 1999, all patrons, whether they were Churches or parents (in the case of Educate Together schools), were required to provide or buy the site and to meet up to 15 per cent of the cost of constructing or renovating the buildings. The State fully financed sites only for Gaelscoileanna at primary level and for Vocational Education Committee (VEC; see below) schools, community schools and comprehensive schools at post-primary level. These arrangements were directly based on – and made possible by – the historical financial power of the Churches and their significant property ownership, and they gave the Churches a head start on Educate Together and the groups of parents behind it. Specific mention should be made of the development of technical and vocational schools from the 1930s onwards in this context. These schools stemmed directly from a State initiative. They were created under the Vocational Education Act of 1930 as State technical and vocational schools under the management of local authorities that came to be called VECs. As such, they represented the first dent in the system of private patronage. According to the Act, they were meant to be non-denominational or secular schools. Their relative independence from religious organisations compared with traditional primary and secondary schools may be partly explained by the Catholic Church’s belated interest in them. The Churches progressively became involved in their management, however, by obtaining a right of representation on the committees and/or on the school boards.43 At post-primary level, the comprehensive and community schools created by the State in the 1960s and 1970s faced a similar development as a result of negotiations between the State and the Churches.44 Overall, the State still provides most of the funding for a network of schools that are not state or publicly owned and that are for the most part controlled by the Christian Churches. In Schools and Society in Ireland, Sheelagh Drudy and Kathleen Lynch represented the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish State in education as symbiotic, or mutually beneficial: the State could count on the financial back-up of the Church and on its ideological support in the perpetuation of a certain social order and capitalist

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culture, while the Church was allowed to spread its own dogmas and rituals in the schools.45 A process of relative democratisation took place in the course of the 1990s: the Education Act of 1998 gave both teachers and parents a right to be represented on school boards, and patrons were asked to work in partnership with them. A  hierarchy of power remained, however, with the school patron still having the last word on key issues such as teacher recruitment and school enrolment rules. Since the late 1990s, the Churches’ rights on ‘their’ schools have also been circumscribed by anti-discrimination legislation that, for example, allows parents to contest a patron’s refusal to enrol their child before the Department of Education or the Equality Authority created in the early 2000s.46 The consequences of these restrictions on church control (and their limited extent) will be examined in the following chapters. The 1937 Constitution: Catholic ideology and education The root of the State’s structural and ideological choices in education policy and religion can be found in the Irish Constitution. In his comparative study of the 1922 and 1937 Constitutions, Paul Brennan analysed what he called the process of ‘de-secularisation’ of the Irish State.47 The 1937 Constitution discarded the idea of a secular state that had been present in the 1922 Constitution. Apart from the mention of the ultimate authority of God in its preamble (that resulted from a compromise between different versions presented to the provisional government of Michael Collins and that did tend to weaken the internal coherence of the project), the 1922 Constitution was indeed essentially a secular document.48 Article 2 stated that the source of all political power and all legislative authority in Ireland was to be found in the people of Ireland. Article 8, the only article devoted to religion, forbade the State from privileging any particular religion and stressed both freedom of conscience and freedom of worship (the ‘free profession and practice of religion’). The same article stated that ‘no law may be made either directly or indirectly’ to ‘affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at the school’. Any discrimination regarding state aid between schools under the management of different religious denominations was also proscribed, and the State could make no claim on the Churches’ private property (including school sites, grounds and buildings). The State thus guaranteed both religious pluralism and the right to refuse all religious instruction.49 Last but not least, according to Article 10, all citizens of the Irish Free State had a right to free elementary education. On the issue of the relationship between State and religion, the first Irish Constitution thus followed the norm of other new European constitutions of the period,50 with the exceptions of Greece, Poland and Romania, whose constitutions explicitly reflected the dominant position of the majority religion.51 The only part of the document that strayed from this norm was its preamble. Among other constitutions written around the same time that had a preamble,

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only the Polish one included a religious dimension comparable to that of the Irish preamble. Paul Brennan points out that the main constitutional trend in Europe after the First World War was to promote the separation between Church and State and the neutrality of the State in matters of religion. The 1922 Irish Constitution was written at a time when there was still some hope of achieving political unity for the whole island in the near future. A secular constitutional framework made it possible to envisage the peaceful coexistence of Catholics and Protestants in the new state and also took into account the small Protestant minority in the south of Ireland, whose social and economic weight remained considerable.52 Following the success of Fianna Fáil in the 1932 legislative election, the decision was made to mark the new political era with the writing of a new constitution, which Éamon de Valera largely took upon himself. He decided to incorporate Catholic principles throughout the new document. The new preamble, which has remained unchanged, took up the principle of the ultimate authority of God as the origin of political power that was already present in the 1922 preamble, but it also introduces the idea of an (implicitly Catholic) Irish people supported by God in its long path towards independence over the centuries: In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Éire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial, […] Do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.

In his analysis of the 1937 Constitution, Patrick Hanafin writes that it attempted to produce a fixed and exclusive narrative of Irish identity, creating ‘an essentialised Irish type, a fior Gael, who was Catholic and nationalist, as the dominant subject of Irish law’.53 Clause 44.2 of the new constitution gave explicit recognition to the ‘special position’ of the Catholic Church ‘as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens’, but this clause was eventually abrogated in 1972. According to Éamon de Valera’s biographers, the influence of John Charles McQuaid, who was a priest at the time and later became Archbishop of Dublin, was a determining factor, in particular as far as Articles 40–5 on personal rights, family, education and religion were concerned: a traditional Catholic ideology informed a number of constitutional clauses on marriage, family, the role of women in society and on abortion. McQuaid’s proposal to describe the Catholic Church in the text as the only true religion was not taken up, however, and the State officially recognised the other Christian denominations present on its territory, along with the Jewish religion and ‘the other religious denominations existing in Ireland’ (explicit mention of particular denominations or religions was removed in 1972). Article 44 as amended in 1972 retains clauses whose juxtaposition is problematic. Clause 44.2.1 guarantees ‘freedom of conscience’ and ‘the free

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profession and practice of religion’ to every citizen, but the very first clause of Article 44 amounts to a public acknowledgement of God (implicitly the Christian God) and religion: ‘The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.’54 This first clause, by asserting the existence of a special relationship between the State and God, seems to imply that the freedoms of conscience and religion guaranteed to citizens in the following clause may not include the possibility that citizens might not have any religious affiliation or religious beliefs, nor indeed that citizens might have religious affiliations other than Christian ones. A form of state neutrality towards religions is then asserted in Clause 44.2.2, however, which states that ‘the State guarantees not to endow any religion’. Such contradictions in the wording of the Constitution have been pointed out by a number of writers, notably by Desmond M. Clarke, who offered a comparative analysis with the religious neutrality of the State in the USA in his 1985 essay on relations between Church and State in Ireland, attributing these contradictions to the Irish State’s only partially realised principle of religious neutrality.55 Gerry Whyte has described constitutional policy on education as straddling ‘an ideological faultline’ in the Irish Constitution, between Catholic teaching and nineteenth-century liberalism.56 The position adopted in the Constitution points to the State’s reluctance to take on the role of educator and to its recognition of the primacy of the family in this domain, in conformity with the teachings of the Catholic Church, including the freedom for parents to provide for their children’s education by sending them to private schools if they so wish.57 As ‘guardian of the common good’, the State only reserves the right (and duty) to ‘require’ that the children receive ‘a certain minimum education, moral, intellectual and social’.58 The limited state involvement in education up to the late 1960s is rooted in the long-standing prevalence of a Catholic ideology in the conceptions of the respective roles of family, Church and State in education. According to Article 42.1, The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children.

Article 42.2 deals with the rights of parents, stating that ‘parents shall be free to provide this education in their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised and established by the State’. The following clause specifies that ‘the State shall not oblige parents in violation of their conscience and lawful preference to send their children to schools established by the State, or to any particular type of school designated by the State’ (42.3.1). The freedom or rights of parents do not amount to an obligation by the State to systematically fund private schools, as Clause 42.4 states:

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The State shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative, and, when the public good requires it, provide other educational facilities or institutions with due regard, however, for the rights of parents, especially in the matter of religious and moral formation.

The State thus has to provide for free elementary schooling and to respect the rights of parents, but, according to the Constitution, it is only meant to supplement and give ‘reasonable aid’ to private schools and not fully fund them. As Áine Hyland has noted, the change in the Rules for National Schools of 1965 over-interpreted the constitutional clauses that had been invoked to justify it. The preface to the new Rules stated that they complied with Articles 42 and 44.2.4 of the Constitution, but the change amounted to asserting that all National Schools were denominational whereas the said constitutional clauses only contained an acknowledgement that denominational schools were an integral part of the education system.59 The fact that not all schools had an exclusively mono-denominational intake was not taken into account, and there was no attempt made to cater for parents who might not wish their children to attend a denominational school.60 So far, however, case law has tended to follow this over-interpretation of the Constitution, asserting that it contains an implicit protection of the denominational nature of schooling in Ireland.61 We will come back later to the issue of rights, including children’s rights, as a weak spot in the 1937 Constitution, but it should be stressed at the outset that the Constitution also contains clauses that not only guarantee ‘freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion’ of every citizen (Article 44.2.1) but also commit the State not to discriminate on the ground of religious profession, belief or status (Article 44.2.3). The 1937 Constitution explicitly recognised ‘the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child’ (Article 42.5), but without defining these rights, at least until the Children’s Rights Referendum in 2012, which resulted in an amendment of the Constitution. The new amendment did not touch upon issues of freedom of conscience or religion, however. It also ignores the major constitutional issue of whether children are or should be considered as citizens in their own right and thus be implicitly included in clauses regarding freedom of conscience and religion and other potentially relevant clauses under the heading of ‘fundamental rights’ (Articles 40–4). The first subheading details the ‘personal rights’ of citizens ‘as human persons’, logically (if implicitly) including children. These personal rights, along with those pertaining to ‘every citizen’, are individual ones and include equality before the law (40.1). Building/reproducing a Christian Irish society through education Leaving the structures of the Irish education system unchanged after Independence, the new state chose to focus instead on the content of teaching, with the aim of giving a new national direction to formal education. Schools

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were now expected to contribute fully to the renewal of an Irish culture defined as Gaelic-Catholic and to serve as agents of change in a cultural, as opposed to structural, revolution.62 As John Coolahan has remarked, dominant thinking in educational matters at the time was much more imbued with ideological and political principles than with reflections on the theory and practice of education.63 As Drudy and Lynch intimated when they described the church–state relationship as a mutually beneficial one, the State knew that it could count on the Catholic Church and its ‘National Schools’ to develop a nationalist Catholic-Gaelic culture that would assure its legitimacy. In 1925, the government set up a committee in charge of revising the school curriculum. The committee was chaired by a priest, Revd J. McKenna, and it produced a report that asserted the primacy of the religious message in education: Of all the parts of the school curriculum Religious Instruction is by far the most important, as its subject matter, God’s honour and service, includes the proper use of all man’s faculties and affords the most powerful inducements to their proper use. We assume, therefore, that Religious Instruction is a fundamental part of the school course. Though the time allotted to it as a specific subject is necessarily short, a religious spirit should inform and vivify the whole work of the school. The teacher – while careful in the presence of children of different religious beliefs, not to touch on matters of controversy – should constantly inculcate, in connection with secular subjects the practice of charity, justice, truth, purity, patience, temperance, obedience to lawful authority and all the other moral virtues. In this way, he will fulfil the primary duty of an educator, the moulding to perfect form of his pupils’ character, habituating them to observe, in their relations with God and with their neighbour, the laws which God both directly through the dictates of natural reason and through Revelation, and indirectly through the ordinance of lawful authority, imposes on mankind.64

The Christian faith was presented as central in the educational mission of Irish schools, but the official documents did not go as far as advocating strictly Catholic content, which would have been rejected by the Protestant minorities. As a result, the place of Catholicism in the official definition of Irish identity was not as explicit as that of the Gaelic tradition in the Ministry for Education’s publications and in the actual curricula. Until the 1960s at least, the national image conveyed in curricula and textbooks – notably in history – still considered the Catholic population as the descendants and direct heirs of the original Gaelic people, within a conception that was ethnic or blood-related rather than strictly religious.65 Gaelic tradition and Catholic identity were at the basis of the popular vision of Irish history as an eight-century struggle ‘for Faith and Fatherland’ whose logical conclusion was the establishment of a Gaelic-Catholic State, and this popular vision was widely reflected in the school curricula of the first few decades after Independence.66 Outside of religious instruction per se, another dimension of the influence of religion in schools can be found in the teaching of history, since one of the functions of school history was to inculcate moral values. As Gabriel

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Doherty has noted, given the social and religious context of the time, this idea of the moral value of history could only have a Catholic orientation in the great majority of schools, and it could be seen as a means of introducing a religious dimension into a school subject that was supposed to be a secular one without leaving oneself open to accusations of sectarianism.67 In the case of Ireland, the chosen angle was bound to have profound implications on the version of history to be taught. It was, indeed, very tempting to build up the Catholic version of Irish history into a morally edifying tale in which the Irish ‘race’ was shown to possess exceptional moral and spiritual traits. Illustrations of this could be found in comments made by school inspectors, with, for example, Deputy-Chief Inspector of National Schools Seumas Fenton declaring in 1938, as part of a conference on ‘Tradition and Nationality’ reproduced in the Irish School Weekly, that ‘[the Irish people’s] afflictions were purifications of the spirit, preparatory to final national triumph’.68 Along similar lines, the idea of a symbiosis between the national and spiritual ideals was central in the historical perspective of Minister for Education Richard Mulcahy. Talking about the members of the Gaelic League, he declared to the Dáil in 1950, They found the living Irish nation in the fastnesses of West Cork or the Donegal Hills or the Connaught rocks, they found a Biblical people with a magnificent mind and a character that emerged from something great in the past.69

A distinction should be made, however, between what a religiously based school history could have been and what it really was in the first decades after Partition. The place held by the Catholic religion in school history was much more cultural, as one of the essential traits of Irish identity, than religious in the strict sense of the term.70 In this sense, the Irish government did not show itself quite as ‘Catholic’ as some would have liked it to be. Timothy Corcoran’s opinion was a case in point. A  Jesuit as well as a professor in the Education Department of the National University of Dublin, he authored a number of articles in the 1920s in the Catholic Bulletin and The Irish Monthly (called Catholic Ireland when it was first launched in 1873) and is widely considered as having had a great deal of influence in the making of the school curriculum. Corcoran thought that the Catholic school ‘should provide a thoroughly and expressly Catholic Course in History, wherein the Church [would] take its fullest place as the directing force in all civilisation and progress’, and he contended that history and geography could then ‘be made a broad highway for the conveyance of Catholic truth to the minds of our students’.71 He complained repeatedly that his recommendations had not been heeded. He regretted that even in Catholic schools history had adopted a secular outlook and warned against the influence of what he saw as secular English norms in the content of examinations and textbooks (even nationalist ones).72 As an antidote, he proposed to combine the history syllabus and the historical dimension of religious instruction into one course.73 It also seemed to him necessary to inscribe Irish history firmly within the framework of international, especially European, Catholic

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history. In effect, this theory of a specifically Catholic vision of history was not taken up by the relevant authorities at state level, and the conception of the Catholic dimension of Irish national identity present in the history curriculum was based more on political and social elements than on religious ones as such. Between the 1920s and 1960s, there was little change in the general outlook and curricula for schools. The new Rules for National Schools of 1965 did introduce changes, however (other than the new assertion of the denominational nature of the school system, mentioned above) that tended to support the idea that the whole educational process in all schools could be legitimately pervaded with religion. The Rules were amended in the area of religious instruction: in the new formulation of Rule 68, the sentence asking teachers to ‘be careful, in the presence of children of different religious convictions, not to dwell on controversial subjects’ simply disappeared.74 In the same 1965 text, the regulations concerning the timetabling of religious instruction were made more flexible. It was no longer judged necessary to place religious instruction at the beginning or at the end of the school day, thus making it even more difficult to withdraw children from religion class.75 These changes effectively weakened the protection of the rights of children not affiliated to the religion of the school patrons (and of the majority of parents). The still valid constitutional clause by which the State guaranteed the right for any child attending a school in receipt of state funds not to attend religious instruction in that school (Article 44.2.4) was thus practically ignored in the Rules for National Schools from the mid 1960s onwards. It is striking that contemporary debates on whether religion classes should take place at the beginning or end of the school day (to make it possible for parents to withdraw their children) in turn completely ignore the fact that this was part of the Rules for National Schools until 1965. Áine Hyland has asked what justification there could have been for the decision to suppress a clause that had protected the rights of minorities in the education system for almost half a century.76 Kevin Williams offers a possible interpretation, in line with the decision to assert the denominational nature of the system and with the recommendation to officially recognise ‘denominational education in all its dimensions’ to be found in the 1954 Report of the Council of Education.77 He supposes that the Department of Education simply no longer considered these precautions necessary, precisely because there was now an official assertion of the denominational nature of the whole system.78 The 1992 Green Paper on Education recognised that these changes had indeed ‘weakened the protections that existed for children of religious beliefs different to those of the majority in the schools’, but this did not lead to any change in the Rules for National Schools or any new legal disposition on the matter and on its potentially discriminatory consequences.79 The 1965 Rules for National Schools still acknowledged a theoretical right for children not to attend religious instruction if their parents did not wish them to, but the advent of the integrated curriculum from 1971 onwards added to the practical difficulties that teachers and parents already faced, helping to

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making this right largely ignored. Indeed, the Teacher’s Handbook for the new 1971 primary curriculum stipulated in its introduction: The decision to construct an integrated curriculum … is based on the following theses … that the separation of religious and secular instruction into differentiated subject compartments serves only to throw the whole educational function out of focus … The integration of the curriculum may be seen in the religious and civic spirit which animates all its parts.80

Teachers in all schools were thus explicitly encouraged to imbue all of their teaching with a religious dimension, civic and religious spirits being considered two sides of the same coin. This new ‘integrated’ approach was perfectly attuned to a school environment where religious symbols were omnipresent, with Christian crosses, crucifixes, religious paintings and sculptures adorning school walls inside and out. The combination of the new Rules for National Schools of 1965 and the integrated curriculum of 1971 led to a manifest regression in terms of minority rights and children’s rights (even if children’s rights in the area of freedom of conscience and religion had until then been viewed only as deriving from their parents’). By going as far as asserting the denominational nature of the education system as a whole rather than merely acknowledging the denominational character of schools owned by the Churches – as the Churches themselves had asked – the Irish State arguably found itself in violation of its own constitutional clauses on freedom of conscience and religion.81 Before the 1990s, Labour TD Michael D. Higgins and Irish historian John A. Murphy were among the few political figures to repeatedly point to this state of affairs in the Dáil or Seanad.82 As we will see, not only is the symbolic and visual presence of the Catholic religion still very strong in most Irish primary schools but the 1999 primary curriculum also continues to advocate an integrated approach without explicitly taking up the distinction between religious and secular subjects that had been officially discarded in the 1971 curriculum. The 1971 curriculum was praised for its innovative character in other respects and from a pedagogical point of view, but, as was already suggested in the extract from the introduction quoted above, the place given to religion constituted a strong element of permanence. The passage on the primacy of the religious message in education from the Report and Programme of the National Programme Conference of 1926 as amended in the 1965 Rules for National Schools was quoted in this new curriculum, and a similar spirit could be found in the part on the aims of primary schooling: Each human being is created in God’s image. He has a life to lead and a soul to be saved. Education is, therefore, concerned not only with life but with the purpose of life. And, since all men are equal before the eyes of God, each is entitled to an equal chance of obtaining optimum personal fulfilment.83

The authors ended the chapter devoted to civic instruction by declaring that the educational process as a whole and in all subjects in primary schools was

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first and foremost meant to contribute to form ‘enlightened and conscientious citizens’ and ‘help the child to achieve a proper relationship with God, with his neighbour and with his environment’.84 Social and Environmental Studies were meant to develop in children ‘an appreciation of Nature as the work of God’.85 In his analysis of official documents published on civic instruction (then called ‘Civics’) for secondary schools in 1966, Kevin Williams shows that the authors considered civic instruction as deriving naturally from religious principles and that they meant for it to be grounded in those principles as the moral basis for the political and social duties of the citizen.86 This type of outlook mirrored Timothy Corcoran’s thesis in the 1920s when he insisted on the consubstantial link between religious instruction and civic instruction, with the latter being ‘by necessity’ subordinated to the former.87 At primary level, this link was not explicitly developed, but the 1971 curriculum as a whole clearly relied on the assumption that the whole population shared a common Christian outlook. The section on civic instruction thus explained that the child should take his inspiration for the model family from the ‘Holy Family’ and that the example of Christ should always be present to the child as an ideal to which he should aspire.88 In the same section, the authors declared: ‘above all, [patriotism] will prove itself in its consistency with duty to God and to the moral law’.89 The choice of a Christian perspective did represent a form of progress in terms of religious pluralism compared with the more strictly Roman Catholic vision that had been privileged at least implicitly up to then, most strikingly in school history. The 1971 history curriculum called on teachers to acknowledge the contribution of all (implicitly Christian) religious traditions to the development of modern Ireland. This evolution could be considered a first step towards a widening of perspective, though some have qualified it by describing the new national representation as a transitional form of Irish identity, founded on a Christian heritage and perspective but maintaining a strong Catholic influence. (That influence is illustrated by recommended reading for children in history, with titles such as The Children’s Book of Irish Saints, Irish Saints for Boys and Girls or Four Saints of Ireland.90) We will return to this question in the chapter on current curriculum content. Whether we look at the place of religion in Irish schools today from the point of view of structure or content, it can only be understood with reference to this historical context and its contemporary ramifications. The 1937 Constitution is still valid, and so are the 1965 Rules for National Schools, to all intents and purposes. The segregated structure of the education system on a denominational basis has not been put into question, even if there are some perspectives of change today. In the following chapters, we will see that in the past thirty years there has been an increasing contrast between the largely unchanged educational structures and the considerable developments in terms of the dominant cultural ideology conveyed through the school curricula. The following chapter aims at giving an insight into the main social transformations in the Republic of Ireland since the 1960s and the consequences of these developments for religion’s place in contemporary society and in the

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dominant representations of Irish identity. We will then examine major elements of permanence and change in the education policies of Irish governments in the past twenty years, looking specifically at the relationship between education, culture and religion. Notes 1 For a wide-ranging study of international works on the relations between society and religion, see Roberto Cipriani, Manuel de sociologie de la religion (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004). 2 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 3. 3 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, pp. 3–4. 4 Donald H. Akenson, The Irish Education Experiment: The National System of Education in the Nineteenth Century (London and Toronto:  Routledge & Kegan Paul and University of Toronto Press, 1970), pp. 301 ff. 5 Sean Farren, The Politics of Irish Education, 1920–65 (Belfast:  Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, 1995), pp. 2–3. 6 John Coolahan, Irish Education:  Its History and Structure (Dublin:  Institute of Public Administration, 1981), p.  5; Commissioners for National Education in Ireland, Rules for National Schools, 1898 edition. Quoted in Áine Hyland, ‘The Multi-denominational Experience in the National School System in Ireland’, Irish Educational Studies, 8:1 (1989), 89–114, at p. 89. 7 Paul Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation in Ireland’, Cycnos, 13:2 (1996), 5–13, at p. 6. 8 Coolahan, Irish Education, p. 16. 9 Coolahan, Irish Education, Chapter 1. 10 Coolahan, Irish Education, pp. 17–18. 11 Denis McLaughlin, ‘The Irish Christian Brothers and the National Board of Education: Challenging the Myths’, History of Education, 37:1 (2008), 43–70. 12 St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and Our Lady of Mercy College, Carysfort (closed down in 1988), in Dublin; Mary Immaculate College, in Limerick; De La Salle College, in Newtown, Waterford (closed down as a training centre in 1939); St Mary’s College, in Belfast. Kenneth Milne, ‘Teacher-Training’, in Sean J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 536. 13 Coolahan, Irish Education, p. 36. 14 Sheelagh Drudy and Kathleen Lynch, Schools and Society in Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1993), p. 20. 15 Coolahan, Irish Education, pp. 20–1. 16 Farren, Politics of Irish Education, p. 32. 17 Coolahan, Irish Education, pp. 72–3. 18 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, p. 5. 19 The Irish Catholic weekly, founded in 1888, set itself the task of uniting Catholicism and nationalism and promoting Christian democracy. Patrick O’Farrell, Ireland’s English Question (London: Batsford, 1971), p. 224. For an overview of the historical roots of this alliance, see Paul Brennan, ‘La Délaïcisation de l’État (1922–1937)’, in Paul Brennan (ed.), La Sécularisation en Irlande (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1998), pp. 105–28, at pp. 108–11.

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20 Laurence Marley, Michael Davitt, Freelance Radical and Frondeur (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), p. 285. 21 Freeman’s Journal, 22 January 1906. Quoted in Marley, Michael Davitt, p. 285. 22 Brennan, La Sécularisation en Irlande, p. 7. 23 Quoted in Elaine Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots: St Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood (Cork: Cork University Press, 2004), p. 33. 24 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots. 25 Donald H. Akenson, A Mirror to Kathleen’s Face:  Education in Independent Ireland, 1922–1960 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975), pp. 31–4. 26 Akenson, A Mirror to Kathleen’s Face, p. 34. 27 Patrick Clancy, Sheelagh Drudy, Kathleen Lynch and Liam O’Dowd (eds), Irish Society: Sociological Perspectives (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1995), p. 474. 28 Louis O’Flaherty, ‘Religious Control of Schooling in Ireland: Some Policy Issues in Review’, Irish Educational Studies, 13:1 (1994), 62–70, at p. 63. 29 Séamas Ó Buachalla, Education Policy in Twentieth Century Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1988), p. 221. 30 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, p. 8. 31 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, p. 5. 32 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 153. 33 Report entitled Future Involvement of Religious in Education (1973), quoted in O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 153. 34 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education. 35 For a more detailed survey of the issue of school control in the relations between Church and State in the twentieth century, see John Coolahan, ‘Church–State Relations in Primary and Secondary Education’, in James P. Mackey and Enda McDonagh (eds), Religion and Politics in Ireland at the Turn of the Millennium (Dublin: Columba Press, 2003), pp. 132–51. 36 Department of Education, Rules for National Schools under the Department of Education, (1965), p. 8. 37 Address by Jan O’Sullivan, Minister for Education and Skills, to the IPPN Annual Conference, 28 January 2016, available at www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/ Speeches/2016-Speeches/SP2016-01-28.html (accessed 14 March 2016); State‑ ment from the Bishops’ Council for Education in response to Minister’s rescinding of Rule 68, available at www.catholicbishops.ie/2016/01/28/statement -from-the-bishops-council-for-education-in-response-to-ministers-rescinding-ofrule-68/ (accessed 14 March 2016). 38 Department of Education, Rules for National Schools, 1947. Quoted in Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Experience’, p. 90. 39 See www.educatetogether.ie/about/history (accessed 2 June 2015). 40 Their patron is An Foras Pátrúnachta na Scoileanna Lán Ghaeilge [Institutional Patron of Irish-Language Schools). 41 Commission on School Accommodation (Department of Education and Science), Criteria and Procedures for the Recognition of New Primary Schools:  Report of the Technical Working Group, 1998. 42 Educate Together, Shadow Report by Educate Together on the First National Report to the United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by Ireland (Dublin: Educate Together, 2005). 43 Drudy and Lynch, Schools and Society in Ireland, pp. 11–13 and 80–1.

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44 Educate Together, Shadow Report, pp. 80–1. 45 Educate Together, Shadow Report, pp. 74–5. 46 Deegan et al., Primary Voices, pp. 4–5. 47 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, pp. 105–28. 48 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’. 49 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, p. 118. 50 In Austria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Turkey. 51 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, pp. 119–20. 52 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, p. 121. 53 Patrick Hanafin, ‘Legal Texts as Cultural Documents:  Interpreting the Irish Constitution’, in Ray Ryan (ed.), Writing the Irish Republic:  Literature, Culture, Politics, 1949–1999 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 147–64, at p. 150. 54 Article 44.1 of the Constitution of Ireland, 1937 (last amended in 2004). 55 Desmond M. Clarke, Church and State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1985), pp. 222–6. 56 Gerry Whyte, ‘Religion and Education:  The Irish Constitution’, paper presented at the TCD/IHRC Conference on Religion and Education:  A  Human Rights Perspective, 27 November 2010, available at http://www.ihrec.ie/publications/list/ professor-gerry-whyte-paper-on-religion-and-educat/ (accessed 14 March 2016). 57 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, p. 127. 58 Constitution of Ireland, 1937, Article 42.3.2. 59 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Experience’, p. 94. 60 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Experience’, p. 93. 61 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, pp.  320–35. Also Dympna Glendenning, Education and the Law (Dublin: Butterworths, 1999), quoted in Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, pp. 46–7. 62 Coolahan, Irish Education, p. 39. 63 John Coolahan, ‘A Study of Curricular Policy for the Primary and Secondary Schools of Ireland, 1900–1935, with Special Reference to the Irish Language and Irish History’, Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1973, p. 393. 64 National Programme Conference, Report and Programme (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1926), extract in Áine Hyland and Kenneth Milne (eds), Irish Educational Documents, vol. II (Dublin: Church of Ireland College of Education, 1992), p. 106. 65 Karin Fischer, ‘L’Enseignement de l’histoire en Irlande du sud et du nord, 1922–60:  des politiques d’éducation opposées au service d’enjeux politiques’, Cahiers d’Études Irlandaises, 3 (1998), 45–59. 66 Ailbhe MacShamhraín, ‘Ideological Conflict and Historical Interpretation:  The Problem of History in Irish Primary Education, c.  1900–1930’, Irish Educational Studies, 10 (spring 1991), 229–43, at p. 233. 67 Gabriel Doherty, ‘National Identity and the Study of Irish History in Irish Schools, 1900–60’ (MA thesis, University College, Galway, 1992), pp. 13–14. 68 Seumas Fenton, ‘Tradition and Nationality’, Irish School Weekly, 40:34 (1938), p. 800. The Irish School Weekly was the teachers’ journal. 69 Richard Mulcahy, Dáil Debates, vol. 120, col. 1202 (26 April 1950). 70 For a discussion on this, see Karin Fischer, ‘L’Histoire irlandaise à l’école en Irlande, 1921–1996’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Caen, France, 2000), pp. 113–23. 71 Timothy Corcoran, ‘A Highway for Catholic Education’, Irish Monthly, 57 (November 1929), 567–71, at p. 570.

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72 Timothy Corcoran, ‘The New Secondary Programmes in Ireland: II. The Teaching of History’, Studies (June 1923), 249–60, at p. 256. 73 Corcoran, ‘A Highway for Catholic Education’, p. 567. 74 As Kevin Williams noted, this sentence could still be found in the Department of Education’s Rules for National Schools of 1946 (p.  43). Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 47. 75 Hyland and Milne, Irish Educational Documents, p. 135. 76 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Experience’, p. 94. 77 Report of the Council of Education on the Function and the Curriculum of the Primary School (1954), paragraph 331. 78 Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 47. 79 Department of Education and Science, Education for a Changing World: Green Paper on Education (1992), p. 90. Quoted in Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 47. 80 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1971), Introduction. Quoted in Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Experience’, p. 95. 81 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Experience’, p. 96. 82 Among other interventions, Michael D. Higgins, Seanad Éireann Debate, vol. 110:7, cols. 860–9 (11 December 1985); Dáil Éireann Debate, vol. 388:6, cols. 1482–3 (13 April 1989); (also Democratic Left TD Proinsias De Rossa), Dáil Eireann Debate, 373:8, col. 2131 (16 June 1987); John A. Murphy, Seanad Éireann Debate, 119:8, cols. 811–12 (4 May 1988). 83 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook, Part 1, p. 12. 84 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook, Part 2, p. 117. 85 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook, Part 2, p. 12. 86 Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 49. 87 Timothy Corcoran, ‘Religious Knowledge and Citizenship’, Irish Monthly, 53 (November 1925), 567–71. 88 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook, Part 2, p. 122. 89 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook, Part 2, p.  124. See also Fionnuala Waldron, ‘Making the Irish:  Identity and Citizenship in the Primary Curriculum’, in Ciaran Sugrue (ed.), Curriculum and Ideology: Irish Experiences – International Perspectives (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2004), pp. 209–37, at p. 225. 90 Elizabeth Brennan, The Children’s Book of Irish Saints (London:  Harrap, [1963]), Alice Curtayne, Irish Saints for Boys and Girls (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1955), Sister Mary Margaret, Four Saints of Ireland (London: Chapman, 1966). Book titles and references quoted in Roland Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity through Primary School History:  The Irish Case’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27:3 (2006), 311–24, at p. 319.

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Social upheavals and discourses on Irish identity: the place of religion

To understand the contemporary relationship between school and religion in the Republic of Ireland, and the policies and debates that affect it, one must take into account the wider changes at work in Irish society over the past forty years. The aim in this chapter is to offer an overview of these changes, of the place of religion in them and of the fluctuations in the dominant discourse on Irish identity, within the political sphere in particular. Many articles and books published in the past ten to fifteen years have examined the contemporary transformations of Irish society from various angles, and several authors have focused on their impact on perceptions of collective identity, notably on the place of religion in these new perceptions.1 Some writers have developed or questioned the notion of a ‘post-Christian’ Ireland.2 Among the more striking social phenomena, we can include the process of relative secularisation that has taken place since the 1960s, along with a wider socio-cultural and religious diversification that was accelerated by significant levels of immigration in the 1990s and 2000s. To what extent has the privileged place long occupied by the Christian tradition in the Irish public sphere been put into question? Can the current changes be described in ideological terms – as some have done – as a transitional process at work from the ‘Christian nation’ to the ‘republican nation’, marking the advent of a finally ‘modern’ Ireland in the anthropological sense of the term? In a 2008 article on the links between politics and religion in Europe, the historians and anthropologists Claude Kalame, Mondher Kilani and Silvia Mancini noted that the specific anthropological model that defines and marks out modern culture ‘rests mainly on the egalitarian criterion of an inclusive citizenship, which expresses itself within the rule of law, rather than resting on criteria of community belonging, which are generally of an ethnic or religious nature’.3 They pointed to the deep historical roots of this model,4 but also acknowledged the persistent ‘contemporary difficulty in bringing out, at a symbolic rather than strictly institutional level, a meaningful worldview that would truly correspond to the civil model of inclusion and generalised equality’, evoking the tension in the West between an inclusive, egalitarian

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socio-political model and ‘a worldview based on values perceived as both necessary and exclusive’.5 In their analysis, the persistent heritage of a monotheism which is understood to be the ‘religion of foundations’ and whose principles are thought of as absolute and universal may be seen in that light, and they draw a parallel between current discourses on religion as a strong identity marker and the concomitant revival of nationalist themes. The case of the Republic of Ireland would seem to be at the heart of such tensions. In an interview she gave to Newstalk (an Irish radio station) on 4 October 2007, Mary McAleese, who was President of the Irish Republic from 1997 to 2011, made the following declaration: We don’t impose religion on anybody. We had our day with that. We know what it was like when we were forced into a conformity and a uniformity which was anti-human and certainly very clearly against the human and civil rights that we expect in today’s democratic world that we have fought for.6

Despite this strong statement of intent, and despite the profound developments in Irish society over the past forty years, the important place religion still occupies today at both institutional and symbolic levels in the Republic of Ireland may be seen as a sign of the country’s continuing difficulty in truly embracing such a perspective. Social transitions and upheavals since the 1960s and the issue of identity The 1960s marked a turning point in contemporary Irish history; in many ways the following decades, even though they were themselves characterised by significant economic and social changes, with the 1990s as a highlight, only accentuated that change. The economic policy decisions taken at the end of the 1950s were meant to address serious difficulties, with a huge emigration rate as one of their most tangible expressions.7 These decisions represented the first clear break with the isolationist economic principles that had prevailed until then.8 They were the sign of a change in ideological direction that became ever more pronounced in the economic field in the following decades and was bound to have repercussions in other areas of social and cultural life, putting into question the traditional nationalist perspectives at least to an extent.9 As early as 1964, in an essay entitled ‘Ireland, the End of an Era?’, David Thornley, a historian and Labour member of the Irish Dáil and later of the European Parliament, described a country on the verge of a quiet social revolution, ready to open itself more to Europe and its influences and gradually relinquishing its own image as a traditional society with a Gaelic and Catholic cultural foundation.10 Joseph Lee, for his part, offered the following analysis of the consequences of that transitional period on perceptions of the national character in the Republic: Traditional Ireland worshipped its authorised self-portrait with an idolatrous fervour. By the fifties, however, the features bore such tenuous relation to reality that a growing number, including key figures within the establishment, were no longer

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willing to sustain the required degree of self-deception. The portrait faded away. But no alternative self-portrait would emerge to command comparable conviction.11

While this self-portrait, however blurred, did not fully disappear, there was a definite shift from the set of certainties that had been proclaimed for some decades to a more self-questioning phase in terms of national representation. This new phase was bound to be given new impetus with the eruption of conflict in Northern Ireland at the end of the 1960s, which renewed the debate on the position and role of the Republic and on the ‘Irish question’ more generally. Two events in particular could be seen as symbolic markers of these developments and of the opening up of the Irish State. In 1972, the Catholic Church lost its ‘special position’ in the Irish Constitution; a few months later, the Republic of Ireland became a member of the European Economic Community alongside the United Kingdom. These new trends gradually made their mark from the 1970s to the 2000s. The European influence and the economic ‘globalisation’ of Ireland from the 1990s onwards contributed to a profound transformation of the Republic.12 Successive governments turned away from the past-oriented discourse that had long been dominant and towards a more present- and future-oriented perspective, at the risk of leaving little space for historical and cultural introspection.13 As far as the political weight of the Catholic Church and its place in Irish society are concerned, a number of writers have focused on the process of secularisation that has been at work over the past fifteen years or so.14 On the whole, the loosening of ties between Church and State in Ireland can be said to have been much slower than the tightening of links with the rest of Europe, and it is an ongoing process, with its stops and starts.15 The collective soul-searching over Irish identity first led to an opening up towards different ‘historical’ Irish traditions. Garret FitzGerald, leader of Fine Gael and twice Taoiseach (in 1981–82 and then between 1982 and 1987), worked to spread his vision of a plural Ireland capable of encompassing the Catholic and Protestant, Gaelic, Anglo-Irish and Ulster-Scots traditions.16 According to Joseph Lee, he failed to reach the greater part of the population,17 although the new history curricula and textbooks of the 1970s and 1980s did generally follow that trend (as we will see in Chapter 4), which could perhaps be interpreted as a sign of wider popular adherence. Debate on the topic certainly remained rife during that period. When FitzGerald declared in 1981 that national institutions required changes in order for them to become more acceptable to Protestants and that the partitionist attitude of a majority in the South should be put into question, Charles Haughey, leader of Fianna Fáil at the time, answered, ‘We will not apologise for being what we are, or for holding the beliefs we do.’18 Haughey himself, most likely along with many supporters and members of Fianna Fáil, was one of those who still saw in their mirrors the traditional self-portrait evoked by Joseph Lee. Fianna Fáil remained the main political force in the Irish State until the 2008 financial collapse and the elections that followed it; it was in power almost without interruption from 1932 to 1973 and for more than two-thirds of the time within the past thirty years.

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In 2009, it could still claim to represent ‘the mainstream of Irish life’ on its official website.19 Under the impetus of such political figures as FitzGerald and John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) of Northern Ireland, a series of debates on the theme of ‘the New Ireland’ were organised in 1983–84. The New Ireland Forum gathered the four main ‘constitutionalist’ nationalist parties on the island: the SDLP, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party. They failed to resolve the deep-seated differences between the more traditional conception of Charles Haughey and his followers and that of FitzGerald and others, as was confirmed in the ambiguous final report, but some did see in the work and outcome of the forum the beginning of a move towards more open representations of Irish identity along the lines of what FitzGerald was calling for.20 This message of pluralism was still mostly understood as involving all the so-called historical and cultural traditions of Ireland (and only them), which all inhabitants theoretically belonged to in the absence of any significant contemporary immigration. A more detailed analysis of contemporary conceptions of Irish identity in the Republic of Ireland would require more space than I can devote to it here. In order to set the scene so that a presentation and discussion of education policies may be understood within that framework, two quotations borrowed from Brian Walker and dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century will help illustrate and put in perspective the contemporary debate on Irish identity. In 1909, Robert Lynd, author of a book on family life in Ireland, gave the following definition of ‘the real Irishman’: What is an Irishman? The truth is, there is a great deal of nonsense talked about ‘the real Irishman and the typical Irishman’ – to mention two phrases common among thoughtless people. The real Irishman is neither essentially a Celt nor essentially a Catholic. He is merely a man who has had the good or bad fortune to be born in Ireland or of Irish parents, and who is interested in Ireland more than any other country in the world. The Orange labourer of the north, whose ancestors may have come from Scotland, has all the attributes of an Irishman no less than the Catholic labourer of the west, whose ancestors may have come from Greece, or from Germany, or from Spain, or from wherever you care to speculate.21

Such a definition was implicitly based on a belief in a form of jus soli combined with a conception of national belonging as the product of a common interest akin to that theorised by Ernest Renan at the end of the nineteenth century.22 From a contemporary perspective, this definition is also notable for reminding all and sundry in Ireland of their foreign origins and for deliberately undermining any misplaced feeling of pride in the mere fact of being born in a particular place. Conversely, in 1901, David Patrick Moran defended his exclusive conception of a necessarily Catholic Ireland in The Leader: The only thinkable solution of the Irish national problem is that one side gets on top and absorbs the other until we have one nation, or that each develops

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independently. As we are for Ireland, we are in the existing circumstances on the side of Catholic development […]. If a non-Catholic nationalist Irishman does not wish to live in a Catholic atmosphere, let him turn Orangeman.23

The author here offered only two choices to non-Catholics, either assimilation into a political entity characterised by a ‘Catholic atmosphere’ or complete exclusion. He was thus justifying an absolute form of majority rule from a political and religious perspective (the two being inextricably linked in his view), on historical and nationalist grounds. One may find similar positions in some of the debates about Irish identity at the turn of the twenty-first century. Contemporary expressions have usually been couched in more careful terms or toned down, however, and justify Christian rather than strictly Catholic dominance in the public sphere.24 The notion of ‘absorption’ or assimilation is no longer considered as politically or socially acceptable (as may be judged from some caricatures of the French counter-model in the Irish media). The ‘solution’ envisaged by Moran, which paved the way for the partition of the island at the time, can no longer be seriously or widely considered within the context of the Irish State and of cultural and religious diversification, as it would amount to encouraging forms of radical xenophobic rejection.25 But Moran’s exclusive stance does have a contemporary equivalent, which is founded on the idea that the continued institutional dominance of Catholicism/Christianity in the Irish State may be justified on historical grounds and on the basis of majority rule and thus has to be accepted by all non-Catholics (and also by Catholic liberals) living in the Republic. The public debate on Irish identity took on renewed impetus as a result of social developments and the new population influx of the late 1990s and 2000s. The gradual secularisation of Irish society from the 1960s onwards, and a new awareness of cultural and religious diversity enhanced by immigration, have led to a move away from the traditional cultural, or even ‘racial’, vision of the typical Irishman, which was aptly summed up as ‘WHISC’ for ‘White, Heterosexual, Irish-born, Settled, Catholic’ by Marshall Tracy in 2000.26 While the persistence of a conception of Ireland as a Christian country cannot be ignored – and remains visible in political discourse, as we will see – it has also become increasingly difficult to deny the complex, plural reality of contemporary Irish society. Relative secularisation In La Sécularisation en Irlande (1998), Paul Brennan evoked the first signs of a ‘secularising modernity’ within Irish society.27 He noted that, compared with neighbouring countries, ‘Irish-style secularisation’ was still a recent phenomenon, with its fits and starts. He also pointed out that such signs may be interpreted in different ways, some analysing them as opening up a new era of ‘communitarianism’ while others focused on the decline of religion in society. The signs of a loosening up of the ties between religion, society and politics in the Republic of Ireland may be relatively recent, but there has also

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been a tendency to forget that a process of political ‘de-secularisation’ took place between the first Constitution of 1922 (which was, as we saw briefly, an essentially secular document) and the second Constitution of 1937, which was heavily influenced by Catholic ideology.28 In her chapter from the same work on religious beliefs and practices and on moral values in the period 1973–95, Marguerite Corish-Arnal defined (social) secularisation as a process by which society no longer uses the majority religion, here Catholicism, as its systematic framework of reference.29 She showed that, despite the still high proportion of practising Catholics at the time, the influence of the Catholic religion on mores and on moral values had indeed diminished over the period. She noted that the relative movement of emancipation of Irish Catholics from their Church did not amount to a radical form of secularisation or ‘de-Christianisation’, as Irish Catholics were ‘not ready to accept a society in which Christian values would have disappeared’.30 She contended, however, that in Irish society religion would gradually be relegated to the private sphere and ‘would not provide a systematic reference point for societal choices any more’.31 Social developments since the 1990s tend to confirm that analysis, at least to a point.32 The wish for change has been reflected by a significant increase in the number of civil wedding ceremonies (around a quarter of all weddings by 2006), by the sizeable majority who voted in favour of same-sex marriage in the 2015 referendum, as well as by the rising number of parents looking for alternatives to denominational schools – many of them choosing Educate Together schools – in the past ten years or so.33 Among the majority of people who would still call themselves Catholic, a significant number do not practise their religion any more. According to a survey carried out for the Irish Examiner in 2008 and published in an article with a revealing headline (note the collective possessive adjective) ‘Losing Our Religion’, about 45 per cent of Catholics still went to Mass at least once a week, as against 81 per cent in 1990.34 Figures from 2012 show a further decline in attendance, to 34 per cent on average, with a low of 14 per cent in the Dublin area.35 There is in fact a whole gradation between believers who may not attend Church any more but would still describe themselves as religious and those who are also sometimes called ‘cultural Catholics’ because they have only retained the cultural dimension of traditional Irish Catholicism. Hence the use of the phrase ‘à la carte Catholicism’ to describe the new religious reality. Some have also described the process as the replacement of the old, ‘all-encompassing’ culture by a variety of ‘subcultures’ or even forms of ‘privatisation’ of the Catholic religion.36 This trend makes it more and more problematic to regard people who would tick the box ‘Catholic’ in the census as one homogenous group, even in terms of religious beliefs. According to the 2011 census, there has also been a spectacular increase in the number of people declaring that they have no religion, which has more than quadrupled in the past twenty years. In 1961, when that category was added

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for the first time, little more than 1,000 people chose to tick the ‘No Religion’ box. By 2011, the ‘No Religion’ category was more than 260,000-strong (having risen from around 66,000 in 1991 and 186,000 in 2006) and has now paradoxically become the main ‘religious’ minority in the Republic of Ireland, more than double the number of members of the Church of Ireland, 124,445 in 2011. (There has also been a significant decline in church attendance among declared members of the Church of Ireland, in parallel to that of Catholics.37) More than 60,000 people chose not to tick any box in the question on religion in both the 2006 and 2011 censuses (counted as ‘not stated’).38 Interestingly, the authors of the press release on these census results for 2011 felt the need to specify the numbers of school-going children and even the number of babies included in this ‘No Religion’ category.39 The specific issue of the recognition of people without any religion as a minority remains problematic, considering that these people do not actually constitute a community or think of themselves as such. The absence of any strong group consciousness does not prevent them from being potentially discriminated against on the basis of this one characteristic they might have in common. As Dick Spicer, coordinator of the Irish Humanist Association, has noted, the very existence of this minority is still rarely recognised in Ireland, despite its numerical importance.40 The Irish Humanist Association’s tendency to represent people with ‘No Religion’ as a community, far beyond their actual members, may be understood as part of an attempt to remedy this situation and end the discrimination such people might encounter in Ireland.41 Such a choice of words is probably to be expected in an environment that appears to have been heavily influenced by a traditional twentieth-century English view of society as neatly divided into groups and communities. But the term remains inadequate in this particular instance. More generally, this helps highlight the fact that dividing the population into groups with a distinct set identity (whether communities, minorities or even majorities) is highly problematic as it overlooks or ignores the multilayered and changing patterns of both individual and collective identifications. In turn, these patterns highlight the importance of acknowledging and supporting individual civil and human rights: relying mainly or solely on community or minority rights would not guarantee that the basic rights of every person in society are protected. To come back to the issue of the link between religion and society, and specifically between Catholicism/Christianity and national identity in Ireland, the authors of the few studies or surveys carried out in the past ten years on children’s and teenagers’ constructions of Irish identity have been struck by the absence or near-absence of religion as an identity marker. Fionnuala Waldron and Susan Pike, who carried out a survey of a sample of children of primary-school age in 2003 and 2004, found that the vast majority continue to associate Irish national identity with a number of cultural markers such as the Irish language or Guinness, while a small minority make a direct link between Irish identity and being born on Irish soil. They also noted the

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absence of religion among the themes put forward by the children. Only six children (out of 119) mentioned religion at all, out of whom three mentioned it in the context of religious diversity and freedom of religion (‘You can have a different religion and people are not against you’), while the other three made a link between the fact of going to Mass and being Irish.42 In the surveys carried out in the early 2000s by Anne Lodge and Kathleen Lynch on the experience and viewpoints of secondary-level school pupils, the latter generally insisted that their religious convictions were a private matter. According to the authors: The most striking aspect of any discussion regarding religious identity was its apparent lack of relevance to the lives of young people. … most young people stated that religious belief was entirely a private, individual matter, or was of no particular importance in their own lives.43

Lynch and Lodge also noted that some expressly rejected the influence of the Church or religion in their school, which they viewed as imposed on them. In effect, a rising number of people in Ireland may feel Irish without necessarily being Christian or may consider their affiliation to a Christian religion as a private matter, thus minimising the importance or even relevance of this dimension in their conception of Irish collective identity. While most contemporary commentators would now agree that the ties between religion and society in the Republic of Ireland have become loosened, the persistent institutional presence and influence of the Church and the remaining links between Church and State have in turn become even more contentious.44 In 1998, Joseph Ruane contended that Irish secularisation was indeed under way, but he considered that the parallel lack of support for complete separation between Church and State could be explained by the absence of strong ideological support for this concept in Ireland and the persistent refusal of social and political elites to conduct any large-scale action towards such a goal.45 Historically, the only organised movement for a genuine institutional secularisation in the Republic of Ireland has been a small pressure group, the Campaign to Separate Church and State. The most obvious illustration of this persistent link between the political and the religious in the Republic of Ireland may be found in the Preamble to the Irish Constitution (quoted in Chapter 1), which explicitly refers to the Christian God and affirms the Christian, and even (at least implicitly) Catholic, character of the Irish people. This Preamble might be considered as a mere token of the past, were it not for the still strong presence of the Catholic Church in health and educational institutions as well as in a number of constitutional clauses and in the rituals of the State.46 In February 2007, in line with new provisions in the Lisbon Treaty, the Irish government put in place a process of ‘structured dialogue’ between the State and ‘Churches, faith communities and philosophical and non-confessional organisations’.47 A delegation of the Irish Humanist Association (implicitly meant to represent the ‘community’ of people with ‘No Religion’) was invited

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to participate. The Association was grateful for this opportunity to highlight issues of discrimination against non-religious people, but after the event the delegates also expressed their frustration with what they saw as a lack of progress.48 The issues raised in 2014, and not yet settled, include the exemptions to equality legislation that allowed state-funded religious health and educational institutions (i.e. the vast majority of schools and hospitals) to maintain discriminatory recruitment and/or enrolment policies;49 the daily Christian prayer at the opening of the Dáil; and the fact that a religious oath is required from the president as well as from judges and members of the Council of State when they take office. The influence of the Churches in health care is still significant, as Patrick Clancy has charted in his book on Irish society.50 Clancy also points to the fact that the Catholic Church still owns vast tracts of land and a large number of buildings and that to this day the parish hall often remains the only meeting place for the local community (understood here in the widest sense as the inhabitants of a particular district or town), while access to it depends on the good will of the parish clergy.51 The institutional presence of the Churches in the education system will be examined in the following chapters. Joseph Ruane has mentioned the absence of any strong ideological support to explain the weakness of calls for a complete separation of Church and State in Ireland in the 1990s, but how can we account for this absence at a time when pluralist discourses seem to have multiplied? The strong Christian cultural background may largely explain the difficulty of many in Ireland to imagine any non-Christian value system or moral foundation, with a lingering fear of the perceived moral or spiritual void that the Churches’ disengagement from ‘public’ institutions might leave behind them. Along similar lines, and beyond the issue of the institutional presence of the Catholic religion, Bryan Fanning has noted that Irish popular conceptions of social justice are derived from the principles of Catholic solidarity in that they emphasise charity, hospitality and friendly welcome as means to fight against xenophobia, while Irish political culture does not focus on the importance of rights.52 A historic mistrust of the State also leads many to fear the consequences of its involvement in education, even though school curricula (bar religious education) have been under the State’s direct responsibility since 1922. The inability of some to project themselves beyond or outside the boundaries of a Christian moral universe may also explain a tendency to conflate Christian values and democratic ideals. Hence the idea that the rhetoric of human rights is of Christian origin, put forward as an obvious fact during a debate on ‘post-Christian Ireland’ in 2000,53 while an issue of Doctrine and Life (a journal proposing a ‘Catholic viewpoint’ on society) devoted to the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 asserted as self-evident that ‘the movement for European integration arose out of Christian democratic ideals’.54 Such assertions logically fit into the definition by the European-wide Catholic lobby of its own role in the construction of the European Union and of the place it should have in the public sphere of the EU.55

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Cultural and religious diversity and immigration in the 1990s and 2000s From the mid 1990s until 2008 (when Ireland was particularly hard hit by the international financial meltdown), rapid economic growth significantly increased labour needs, which led the migration flow to turn inward for the first time in the contemporary period.56 The speed and scope of immigration were considerable. By 2006, the proportion of foreign-born people had risen to 10 per cent and 13 per cent in the Dublin area, figures which put the Irish State on a par with countries with a much longer history of immigration in the twentieth century, such as England or France. Figures for 2007/8 published by the Department of Education (in fact, estimates given by school heads in the absence of any departmental survey) revealed a similar proportion of children born outside Ireland at primary-school level (around 10 per cent), with significant differences between schools.57 This new population was very diverse, with migrants coming from the UK, the USA (many of them ‘remigrants’), western and eastern European states, including the Baltic states, as well as Asia (especially China), Africa (mainly Nigeria) and South America.58 In May 2004, a special online issue of the Irish Times titled ‘Who We Are’ counted more than 200 languages spoken in Ireland.59 The influx of people of diverse origins, cultures and religions further increased the proportion of the population not identifying itself with Catholicism or even with Christianity. A number of migrants did join the ranks of the main Irish Churches, however, starting with the strong Polish Catholic minority. The 150,000 or so Polish immigrants of the 2000s were welcomed with open arms by the Irish Catholic Church. The main religious newspaper, The Irish Catholic, started including a page in Polish in July 2006, and the Catholic Ireland News website announced that the paper would be distributed for free at Polish Masses over the following few weeks.60 Notwithstanding this particular development, censuses of the past twenty years confirm a significant evolution of the religious make-up of the population. People describing themselves as Catholic still account for a large majority, but with a downward trend, from 91.5 per cent of the population in 1991 to 84.2 per cent in 2011. The Muslim minority has risen from 3,875 to 48,130 (1.1 per cent of the population) over the same period, Islam becoming the third main religion in the country (after the Church of Ireland), closely followed by members of the Orthodox Church (from 358 in 1991 to 44,000 in 2011), the Presbyterian minority being demoted from third to fifth place as a result. Other religious minorities have seen their numbers swell, although such growth remains relative given the actual figures (a few thousand people at most), with around 14,000 Apostolic and Pentecostal members, 10,000 Hindus and 8,000 Buddhists. Overall, more than twenty religious affiliations were represented in answers to the question on religion in 2011, a question that included the ‘No Religion’ category with the significant increase mentioned above.

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This religious diversification of the population was largely acknowledged by the media, and to a point by state authorities, from the end of the 1990s. The State included representatives from the main new religious minorities (as well as the ‘ethical’ one, as the non-religious humanist minority was sometimes described), alongside those of the more traditional Christian Churches, as part of the ‘structured dialogue’ put in place by the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. New communitarian discourse and reassertion of Christian national identity As far as dominant socio-cultural and political discourses in Irish society are concerned, the mere fact of putting forward the Christian heritage of Ireland as opposed to its strictly Catholic heritage, as was increasingly done from the 1970s onwards, was already perceived in the Republic of Ireland as marking considerable progress in terms of religious and cultural opening and tolerance, since it meant including all of the Christian traditions within a common sense of national identity. Andrew Finlay dubbed this evolution the ‘old pluralist agenda’, as opposed to the ‘new pluralist agenda’ that tried to take into account the varied reality of immigrants and refugees.61 Until the mid 1990s, the Christian religious identity projection left little or no place for non-Christian minorities (including people with no religion). In the past fifteen years or so, in accordance with the ‘new pluralist agenda’, official discourses have moved towards recognising the plurality of religious traditions beyond the Christian sphere, the new phrase in vogue in this regard being ‘of all faiths and none’. Whether such recognition has amounted to equality of status remains a matter of debate. Contradictory discourses may be found in the political and institutional spheres in this respect. The then president, Mary McAleese, asserted in the mid 2000s that imposing religion on others was a thing of the past and even talked about what she called Ireland’s ‘zero hour’ in terms of national identity.62 She declared at the Church of Ireland Synod in May 2008: Ireland is neither Catholic, nor Protestant, neither agnostic nor atheist, neither Islamic nor Jewish, but it is a welcoming homeland for people of all faiths and of none. It is a homeland indebted to a rich and complex Christian heritage and with a rich and complex multi-faith heritage already in the making.63

The setting up of a ‘structured dialogue’ between the State and ‘religious/ philosophical communities’ marked a form of recognition of the diversity of beliefs, but also the choice of a communitarian-style approach, dividing the population into distinct groups on the sole basis of their religious affiliations, an approach that was not necessarily part of the vision advocated by Mary McAleese. At a reception organised in 2008 in honour of the Churches and of ‘faith communities’ (a broad phrase meant to allow for the inclusion of delegates from the Irish Humanist Association, in spite of its problematic connotations)

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involved in this ‘structured dialogue’ with the State, Bertie Ahern declared that he was ‘very aware of the high and growing number of our citizens with no religious beliefs’ and that ‘we should always keep in mind the manner in which our democracy proposes an inclusive and respectful approach to all our citizens, regardless of their religious or philosophical perspective’.64 In the light of some of his other pronouncements, however, one may safely assume that Bertie Ahern was here paying lip service to such notions of inclusion and respect rather than describing any actual commitment to full equality of status for each citizen in the area of religion. In the same speech, he denounced what he called ‘aggressive secularism’ and defended the presence of faith and religious belief in the public space, thereby garnering thanks from Cardinal Seán Brady, Primate of Ireland, for the way he recognised, ‘in words as in deeds’, the ‘important and dear place occupied by religion in the hearts and minds of many people in this country’.65 The Cardinal had justifiably understood the Taoiseach’s speech as a public vindication of faith and religion in general (in line with Article 44.1 of the Irish Constitution and its controversial mention of public worship to God), the privileged place still accorded to the Christian tradition remaining implicit. The position of the head of government was here in direct contradiction to the presidential discourse on the religious neutrality of Irish public authorities, and both educational structures and content remained in line with this position in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as we will see. This stance was also in line with the Irish State’s support for the inclusion of a mention of the ‘common Christian heritage of Europe’ in the Preamble to the European Constitutional Treaty in 2004, while secular countries like France had opposed it.66 The Irish government had also been among the countries that wanted an explicit mention of the Christian God, although they did not manage to push that through. After his visit to Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Bertie Ahern declared in the Irish Times that his meeting with the Pope represented ‘a reminder of the values at the heart of the European project’67: Our future can only be shaped with confidence when we are secularly rooted in our culture and in our community. One pillar of that culture is the Christian tradition. It is a culture of community, but one with deep respect for the individual. […] It is the foundation of our common European inheritance.68

The semantic shift from ‘one pillar’ (among others, left unspoken?) to ‘the foundation’ gives Christianity a (the) privileged place in European culture, while the choice of wording clearly, if implicitly, projects the ‘European community’ as a Christian one. Catholicism has been shown to be an influential lobby among others at European level.69 Irish government representatives of the 2000s took it upon themselves to be spokespersons of this interest group (widened to Christianity, at least in the political discourse) within the EU. Brian Cowen, Bertie Ahern’s successor at the head of the Fianna Fáil government in 2008, was notably silent on such issues, at a time of renewed public and media debate on the institutional power of the Irish Catholic Church

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and particularly on the relation between the Churches and schools in 2009 and 2010. For his part, Enda Kenny, who was head of the Fine Gael opposition and then Taoiseach after the 2011 elections, sparked controversy in January 2007 in a ‘them and us’ speech on immigration delivered to Fine Gael TDs (Teachta Dála, or members of the Dáil Éireann, the House of Representatives) and TD candidates. Kenny chose to refer to the Irish people (‘us’) as ‘a Celtic and Christian people’ and declared that, while immigrants ‘should have the right to be free of discrimination’, they also had ‘the responsibility to integrate into our community, comply with our laws and respect our cultural traditions’.70 In an ensuing letter to the Irish Times, a reader took issue with some of the negative reactions to the speech, asserting that ‘Celtic and Christian’ were perfectly generic and objective terms to qualify Irish reality, as any impartial observer was bound to acknowledge. The author of another letter in the same edition, however, asked: What community? Whose cultural traditions? Are ‘we’ a ‘Celtic and Christian people’, as Mr Kenny so confidently claims? Are we not rather uncertain at present of who just exactly ‘we’ are, and challenged as much from within as without by threats to our stability and harmony and identity? Mr Kenny’s use of the c-word, ‘community’, perpetuates this myth of a harmonious ‘we’ into which a discordant ‘they’ must integrate. […] More concretely, think of the way the word has pointed as much to war as to peace on ‘our’ island, with its opposing nationalist and loyalist communities, etc. ‘Community’ is a velvet glove word with an iron fist within. Perhaps this is the meaning of Enda Kenny’s speech? In any case, a national debate on immigration should tell us as much about the hosts as about the guests.71

This reader was pointing at the still pronounced tendency to favour a binary, and necessarily simplistic (but also exclusive) representation, founded on the distinction between a largely mythical ‘us’ and a just as multifaceted ‘them’. As we have seen, Irish institutional realities are still very much at odds both with President Mary McAleese’s discourse of religious neutrality and with the more ‘communitarian’ discourse of Bertie Ahern. In the political sphere, the Labour TDs Proinsias De Rossa and Michael D.  Higgins (and more recently Ivana Bacik and some others) have been among the few members of the Irish parliament to object publicly to the continued presence of marks of Christian pre-eminence in Irish institutions, in the name of freedom of conscience and of the diversity of Irish society.72 From the Christian nation to the republican nation? The idea of a ‘two-way’ integration process put forward at the turn of the twenty-first century conveyed a will to go beyond binary oppositions towards a more inclusive social vision. The intercultural approach it implied intrinsically rejected essentialist and exclusive conceptions of Irish culture or identity. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of Irish political and educational actors, as well as media commentators, thus asserted the need for changes within Irish society itself, to avoid any kind of assimilationist temptation. The first report

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of the Interdepartmental Working Group on the Integration of Refugees in Ireland, published by the Department of Justice in March 2000, was entitled Integration: A Two-Way Process. The publication of this report, along with the creation by the same department in 1998 of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, represented a response by the government, and specifically by the Department of Justice, to critics who accused them of reducing asylum and immigration policy to an issue of immigration control.73 The Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism was asked to set up the National Plan against Racism, launched in October 2001, whose stated aim was to build a new anti-racist awareness and to create the necessary conditions for ‘an inclusive and intercultural society’.74 The work of this committee stemmed from a recognition of the necessity for action to counterbalance negative images and stereotypes that were being spread not only through the media but also by some official figures.75 The committee has now simply ceased to exist, however, as a result of government budget cutbacks in 2008. The Department of Justice and Equality now includes an Office for the Promotion of Migrant Integration. A  national policy statement entitled Migration Nation published in 2008 announced a comprehensive integration strategy and envisaged the setting up of new structures, but these did not see the light of day for lack of funds, and the document itself emphasised a more conservative or traditional view of ‘migrant integration’ rather than a truly intercultural vision.76 The intercultural scope and limits of educational developments in the 2000s will be looked at in subsequent chapters. A legislative and institutional mechanism intended to fight against discrimination (including religious discrimination) was also progressively set up from the end of the 1990s. Equality legislation focused on individual rights (Employment Equality Act 1998, Equal Status Act 2000, amended by the Equality Act 2004), and an Equality Authority was created in 1999 (which replaced the Employment Equality Agency). The Equality Authority’s budget was reduced by 43 per cent in 2010, however, a cutback officially justified by the country’s financial situation.77 One of the structural weaknesses of the new intercultural discourse from the late 1990s onwards has been a widespread tendency to ignore pre-existing diversity – including the presence of Protestant minorities and the existence of Travellers as a distinct cultural group – by presenting the contemporary social evolution as a move from a previously homogenous and monocultural society to a multicultural one. Such a vision was not only commonplace in the media in the late 1990s and 2000s but was also often expressed by political figures. Travellers, paradoxically, seem to have acquired a new visibility partly as a result of the new arrivals, as they now became officially considered as an ethnic minority among others. A declaration by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell in 2005 would have been the exception rather than the norm: ‘That diversity which has always existed in Irish society has now become even more varied and complex and has the capacity to benefit all our communities.’78

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There was also the wider issue of the gap between often vague official discourse on the benefits of ‘multiculturalism’ and the adoption of a coherent political line and actual political action at national level, in other words the gap between discourse and practice, which we will examine in the area of education policy. Within the context of the international debate on multicultural and intercultural concepts and policies, Bryan Fanning has characterised the Irish policy trend as closer to a form of ‘weak multiculturalism’ than to any real intercultural commitment, despite the official preference for ‘interculturalism’.79 Crucially, Fanning noted that equality legislation was not accompanied by a recognition of institutional or indirect forms of discrimination and hence of existing structural inequalities,80 and the field of education is a good illustration of this as we shall see. At the same time, in the context of anti-racist or intercultural policy, when there was no explicit mention of religion, a political leader like Bertie Ahern could choose to refer to the republican tradition, as he did when launching ‘Know Racism’, the national campaign against racism in 2001:  ‘Racism is wrong. Discrimination is wrong, just as sectarian violence is wrong. They have no place in a Republic which is founded on the ideals of the equality and dignity of every member of our human family.’81 In some ways, Irish society still seems to be torn between two different models.82 The first, which has remained dominant and takes after a British trend, is that of a society now characterising itself as multicultural but where WHISCs would keep the upper hand. That such a model would be adopted naturally in Ireland is to be expected since it does not put into question the traditional, culturally oriented sense of Irish identity in any fundamental way. There are some signs of an alternative model, however, that of a truly open and inclusive society that would go beyond its ‘historic’ characteristics by accepting the intercultural dynamic. Such a model would draw a distinction between a necessarily multicultural society and the political community founded on citizenship equality and on the link between the individual and the State.83 When faced with immigration issues for the first time, successive Irish governments tried to avoid the mistakes of neighbouring countries in their integration policy, which largely explains their taking up the intercultural approach, in official discourse at least. In a 2008 comparative analysis of recent multicultural and secular political discourse in the United Kingdom and France, Didier Lassalle noted a convergence between two national trends that had seemed in direct opposition, reflecting attempts by these countries to find correcting mechanisms for some of the perceived defects of these trends or ‘doctrines’ or of their practical applications.84 The Republic of Ireland may be said to occupy a pivotal or transitional position in this international political and ideological debate. In the alternative model, Irish identity would become principally a civic or state identity, which would facilitate equality of treatment between individuals and between groups, at least in theory, as was suggested for example by Shalini Sinha in a 1999 article, ‘The Right to Irishness:  Implications of Ethnicity, Nation and State towards a Truly Multi-ethnic Ireland’.85

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Could this alternative trend be regarded as a symptom of a (re-)discovery of civic republicanism in the Irish Republic? Some Irish historians or commentators have insisted on the absence of a tradition of ‘civic morality’ in Ireland. In 1989, Joseph Lee argued that in Irish society religion compensated for the absence of interiorised values of civic responsibility.86 Joseph Dunne used Lee’s remark in a 1991 article to justify the persistence of the public role of religion in the Republic of Ireland.87 Dunne himself, however, drew from the historical and philosophical sources of the republican idea when tackling the question of citizenship in the Irish State a few years later.88 In 2001, Terence McCaughey, a former professor of Irish and theology at Trinity College, Dublin, contended that the globalising character of the Roman Catholic Church’s vision had not left any room for the development of a ‘civic morality’, but he also expressed optimism about the will of Irish people to build a society and structures that would be based on civic principles rather than religion. He was optimistic about the Irish people’s ability to appropriate values that would be the result of dialogue rather than imposed by an outside authority:  ‘I’m sure we’ll do it, because people want to live together. We’ve been talking about failure of a sense of community, but people want to live together, and deep down they know they have to co-operate.’89 John Coakley, one of the foremost political scientists in Ireland, wrote in 2002, ‘there are signs that an older form of ethnic nationalism has been yielding  – probably rather unevenly  – to a newer form of “civic” nationalism’ founded on the geographical space of the Irish State.90 In a speech to the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals in 2007, the former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald passionately advocated the development of civic republicanism in Ireland when he expounded on the vision and values that he saw as necessary to the future needs of Irish education and society.91 Taking up the theme of the ‘moral void’ left by the collapse of the moral authority of the Irish Catholic Church, he insisted on the necessity for a ‘civic morality’ to fill that void, as well as on what he saw as the special responsibility of schools and teachers in the ‘moralisation’ of society, on the basis of ethical principles such as mutual respect rather than through recourse to a traditional authority imposing its own rules. The former Taoiseach explained how this civic republicanism should enable Irish people to go beyond their tendency for narrow ‘localism’ and help them cultivate a loyalty for a wider common good. Asserting that the choice of the civic republican model would be preferable to both ‘amoral’ economic liberalism and inherently exclusive nationalism, he concluded: In this part of Ireland over the past half-century there has […] emerged a growing concern to create here a State that would eventually have the capacity to embrace on equal terms all sections of the Irish people. […] helped by widespread revulsion against IRA violence in Northern Ireland, our people have, I  believe, been moving in recent times towards a multicultural ethos, and this has brought us a little nearer to the genuine civic republicanism to which I believe we should aspire.92

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One of the signs of the growing influence of these ideas in the Republic of Ireland may be found in Denis O’Sullivan’s analysis of the ‘cultural reconstruction’ of education in the Irish State, which he concludes with a reflection (drawing from Jürgen Habermas’ work93) on the interest of the republican democratic model, with its reliance on notions of solidarity and the common good, in opposition to a liberal democratic model that reduces the state to an administrative structure and favours private interests in a universe of competition and choice.94 As we will see in more detail later, the defence of Catholic schools now largely relies on the notion of private choice (that of parents), rather than on concepts of rights, equality or the common good.95 In the past decade, a series of publications have re-examined and reclaimed republican ideals in the Irish State, drawing from international historical sources and contemporary experiments.96 In parallel, there has been a growing dissociation between religious affiliations, now more often considered as private or personal, and the dominant conception of Irish identity. At the same time, a number of political personalities and Irish authors have continued to legitimise the place of religion in the public sphere, with a gradation between a strictly Christian vision and a vague religious pluralism.97 Declan Kiberd, an Irish author and literary theorist of international standing, echoed Bertie Ahern’s declarations on the place of religion in the public sphere when he asserted: The public sphere should now be able to project the diversity of cultures within it, rather than suppress them. In Ireland, this would involve not just showing respect for Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists, but also for Catholics and Protestants – and that would entail a reversal of many recent trends, which have worked to make even southern Catholicism a matter more of private than public symbolism.98

Kiberd strikingly ignores the existence of people with no religion in his celebration of diversity in Ireland.99 His stance here may result from a confusion between the collective space of society, where various individual cultural (including religious) expressions may intermingle, and the public space of state institutions at the service of citizens, within which a particular onus is or should be on the State to guarantee the absence of discrimination rather than fly the colours of religion(s), in an inevitably limited and inconsistent or unequal way. The notion of public support for religions from the State is indeed bound to imply a hierarchy or prioritising both among religions and between religion and non-religion. It also tends to place religion or religious affiliation before the individual as citizen. In the Irish context, it comes down to a legitimisation and reaffirmation of the preponderance of Christian Churches, and particularly of Catholicism as the majority religion, in public/state institutions. The place of religion and of the Catholic Church in Irish society has been further weakened by the collapse of the moral authority of the Church itself, most notably because of the shocking revelations of the Ryan and Murphy Reports in 2009, compounded by the publication of the Cloyne Report in 2011.100 These reports revealed or confirmed the huge scope of sexual (and

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other) abuse perpetrated on children by church representatives, priests or members of religious orders, throughout the twentieth century and up to very recent times. (The Murphy Report dealt with 1975–2004 and the Cloyne Report with the 1990s, although it also investigated the handling of sexual-abuse allegations by both church and state authorities up to 2009.) They also showed that perpetrators had been systematically protected by the Catholic hierarchy. The Cloyne Report spurred Enda Kenny as Taoiseach to deliver a speech that amounted to a declaration of political independence from the Vatican in July 2011.101 Even in that speech, Kenny chose to stress children’s needs rather than their rights, at times using a vocabulary with Christian undertones (speaking about the duty to ‘protect the sacred space of childhood and restore its innocence’). The decline of the Catholic Church combined with cultural and religious diversification have led political figures to develop a discourse of celebration of diversity in the Republic of Ireland. But the new pluralist ‘agenda’ has led to little questioning of the place of the Church in national, state-funded institutions. In 2011, Ruairi Quinn, Minister for Education, tentatively proposed to halve the number of Catholic primary schools, a proposal which did not amount to a full reappraisal of the system and which had yet to bear fruit in 2016. The Irish State thus seemed to hesitate between three stances: a surface republican discourse founded on the neutrality of the State and on its duty to protect citizens against all forms of discrimination; a lingering attitude of public promotion of religion with a particular focus on Catholicism; and a pseudo-liberal democratic discourse with strong neo-liberal undertones based on the notion of private choice.102 This lack of a clear stance on the part of the State has been particularly obvious in primary and secondary education. As we shall see, general education policy documents and school curricula over the 1990s and 2000s reveal a deep-set ambivalence about the place religion should be accorded in the National School system. While there have been significant changes in declarations of education policy and in curriculum contents, the persistent prevalence of Christianity – as an essential element not only of the Irish historical and cultural heritage, but also of contemporary Irish (and even European) identity in mainstream political discourse – partly explains the refusal of the State over the past twenty years to envisage any actual overhaul of existing institutional structures. Notes 1 Louise Fuller, John Littleton and Eamon Maher (eds), Irish and Catholic: Towards an Understanding of Identity (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2006); Mary P. Corcoran and Perry Share (eds), Belongings: Shaping Identity in Modern Ireland (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2008). 2 Enda McDonagh (ed.), ‘A Post-Christian Ireland?’, special issue of the Irish Review, 27 (summer 2001).

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3 ‘[Il] repose principalement sur le critère égalitaire de la citoyenneté inclusive, laquelle s’exprime dans l’état de droit, au lieu de reposer sur des critères d’appartenance communautaire, lesquels sont en général d’ordre ethnique ou confessionnel’. Claude Calame, Mondher Kilani and Silvia Mancini, ‘Les Fausses Idées sur la religion’, Le Courrier (15 April 2008), p. 4 (my translation). 4 These may be traced back to the political philosophy of John Locke, who explored the nature of the political link and established a distinction between faith and the law (argument of the distinction between state and Churches in his Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689, and ‘Of the Difference Between Civil and Ecclesiastical Power’, 1674). In a second step, Pierre Bayle included non-believers in the political community, thus proposing an enlarged and truly inclusive form of tolerance. For a synthesis, Catherine Kinztler, Qu’est-ce que la laïcité? (Paris: Vrin, 2008), pp. 17–19. 5 ‘[La] difficulté contemporaine à dégager, au niveau non pas institutionnel mais proprement symbolique, un horizon de sens qui corresponde véritablement au modèle civil de l’inclusion et de la généralisation égalitaire’, Calame et  al., ‘Les Fausses Idées’, p. 4 (my translation); ‘[Un] horizon de valeurs vécues comme nécessaires et exclusives’, Calame et al., ‘Les Fausses Idées’, p. 4. 6 Mary McAleese, Newstalk interview (4 October 2007), quoted in Patsy McGarry, ‘The Changing Face of Faith’, Irish Times (10 May 2008). 7 Between 1951 and 1961, about 400,000 people emigrated, out of a population of 3 million. Dermot Keogh, Twentieth-Century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1994), p. 215. 8 Roy Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989), p. 577. 9 Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922–1985 (London: Fontana Press, 1985), pp. 243–4. 10 David Thornley, ‘Ireland: The End of an Era?’, Studies, 53 (April 1964), 1–17. 11 Joseph Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985:  Politics and Society (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 652–3. 12 Nicola Jo-Anne Smith, Showcasing Globalisation? The Political Economy of the Irish Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). 13 Catherine Maignant, Histoire et civilisation de l’Irlande (Paris:  Nathan Université, 1996), p.  101. For a more recent comparative analysis, Jean-Christophe Penet, ‘Closer to Brussels than to Rome? The EU as the New External Referent for a Secularised Irish Society and a Redefined Catholic Identity’, Études Irlandaises, 34:1 (2009), 53–66. 14 Paul Brennan (ed.), La Sécularisation en Irlande (Caen:  Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1998); McDonagh, ‘A Post-Christian Ireland?’ 15 Maignant, Histoire et civilisation de l’Irlande, pp. 96–7 and 100–1. 16 Garret FitzGerald, ‘Ireland’s Identity Problems’, Études Irlandaises, 1 (December 1976), 135–42. 17 Lee, Ireland, p. 653. 18 Reproduced in the Irish Times (12 October 1981), quoted (along with elements of Garret FitzGerald’s speech) in Austin Reid, Ireland since 1923: Politics or Violence? (Harmondsworth: Longman, 1993), p. 65. 19 See www.fiannafail.ie/content/pages/fianna-fail-the-republican-party (accessed 19 August 2009). 20 John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 138–40.

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21 Robert Lynd, Home Life in Ireland (London:  Mills & Boon, 1909), quoted in Brian Walker, Dancing to History’s Tune:  History, Myth and Politics in Ireland (Belfast:  Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, 1996), p.  116 (my italics). 22 Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (Paris: Agora, 1992). First published 1882. 23 David Patrick Moran, in The Leader, 1901, quoted in Walker, Dancing to History’s Tune, p. 117. 24 Many of columnist Breda O’Brien’s articles in the Irish Times throughout the 2000s were variations on this theme. It was one of the stances taken at the time of the public debate over Savita Halappanavar’s death in 2012, with people either supporting or rejecting the comment allegedly made to her in hospital that ‘this is a Catholic country’. We are not trying to gauge whether this has become a majority or a minority opinion but rather to make it clear that such positions do exist today and cannot be said to have become in any way marginal. 25 This type of rejection has not been structured politically up to now in Ireland, apart from small organisations such as the Immigration Control Platform (see www. immigrationcontrol.org). 26 Marshall Tracy, ‘Racism and Immigration in Ireland:  A  Comparative Analysis’, M.Phil. dissertation, Trinity College Dublin, 2000), p. 15 ff. 27 ‘[M]‌odernité laïcisante’: Brennan, La Sécularisation en Irlande, p. 9. 28 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, pp. 105–28. 29 Marguerite Corish-Arnal, ‘Pratiques et croyances religieuses, valeurs morales’, in Paul Brennan (ed.), La Sécularisation en Irlande (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1998), pp. 131–54. 30 Corish-Arnal, ‘Pratiques et croyances’, p. 153. 31 ‘[La religion catholique] n’est plus l’élément de référence systématique lorsque se posent des questions de choix de société’. Corish-Arnal, ‘Pratiques et croyances’, p. 153. 32 Malachi O’Doherty, Empty Pulpits:  Ireland’s Retreat from Religion (Dublin:  Gill & Macmillan, 2008); Eoin Cassidy (ed.), Measuring Ireland:  Discerning Values and Beliefs (Dublin: Veritas, 2002), p. 29. 33 Carl O’Brien, ‘New Legislation Permits You to Marry Almost Anywhere’, Irish Times (5 November 2007). 34 Caroline O’Doherty, ‘Losing Our Religion’, Irish Examiner (20 March 2008). 35 From Ipsos MRBI opinion poll, quoted in Patsy McGarry, ‘Catholics’ Beliefs Not Always by the Book’, Irish Times (30 November 2012). 36 Penet, ‘Closer to Brussels than to Rome?’, pp. 63–4. 37 From 2013 survey on weekly attendance by the Church of Ireland, quoted in Patsy McGarry, ‘Only 15% of Church of Ireland Members Attend Services’, Irish Times (7 May 2015). 38 On the issue of the place of people with ‘no religion’ in Irish society, Karin Fischer, ‘Les “Sans Religion” en République d’Irlande:  une “communauté” invisible?’, in Lucienne Germain, Didier Lassalle, Michel Prum, Florence Binard and Bénédicte Deschamps (eds), Identités et cultures minoritaires dans l’aire anglophone: Entre ‘visibilité’ et ‘invisibilité’ (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010), pp. 131–46. 39 Press Release, Census 2011 Results, ‘Profile 7 Religion; Ethnicity and Irish Travellers’. 40 Patsy McGarry, ‘Representing the Voice of the Expanding Non-Religious Minority’, Irish Times (5 May 2008); ‘Biggest Ethical Group “No Religion” ’, Irish Times (6 June 2003).

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41 Dick Spicer, quoted in McGarry, ‘Biggest Ethical Group “No Religion” ’. 42 Fionnuala Waldron and Susan Pike, ‘What Does It Mean to Be Irish? Children’s Construction of National Identity’, Irish Educational Studies, 25:2 (2006), 231–51, at pp. 242–3. 43 Lynch and Lodge, Equality and Power in Schools, p. 142. 44 See Terence Brown’s synthesis in Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922–2002 (London: Harper Perennial, 2004), pp. 370–3. 45 Joseph Ruane, ‘Secularisation and Ideology in the Republic of Ireland’, in Paul Brennan (ed.), La Sécularisation en Irlande (Caen:  Presses Universitaire de Caen, 1998), pp. 239–54, at pp. 252–3. 46 Brennan, ‘Délaïcisation’, pp. 121–8. 47 Speech by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at the Inauguration of the Structured Dialogue with Churches, Faith Communities and Non-Confessional Bodies in Dublin Castle, 26 February 2007, available at http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/News/ Archives/2007/ Taoiseach's_ Speeches_ Archive_2007/ Speech_by_an_ Taoiseach_ Mr_Bertie_ Ahern_ TD_at_the_ Inauguration_of_the_ Structured_ Dialogue_with_ Churches_Faith_Communities_and_Non-_Confessional_Bodies_on_Monday_ 26_February_2007.html (accessed 18 March 2016). 48 News page of the association’s website, www.humanism.ie (accessed 30 May 2009); Brian Whiteside (President of the Irish Humanist Association), ‘Equality for the Non-Religious is Long Overdue’, Irish Times (31 March 2009). 49 Employment Equality Act 1998 and Equality Act 2004, section 37. 50 Clancy et al., Irish Society, p. 602. 51 Clancy et al., Irish Society. 52 Bryan Fanning, Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 178. 53 Mark Dooley (then Lecturer in Theology at University College, Dublin), in ‘At the Round Table’, transcript of a radio programme on RTÉ Radio 1 (3 December 2000), quoted in the Irish Review, 27 (summer 2001), p. 87. 54 Presentation of the May–June 2008 issue of Doctrine and Life, ‘Voting in the Referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon’, available at www.dominicanpublications. com/ index.php?option=com_content&task= view&id=21&Itemid=25 (accessed 2 February 2010). 55 See François Foret and Philip Schlesinger, ‘Le Religieux dans la légitimation de l’Union européenne’, in François Foret (ed.), L’Espace public européen à l’épreuve du religieux (Brussels: Éditions Libres de Bruxelles, 2007), pp. 229–49. 56 Catherine Piola, La Population irlandaise au XXIe siècle (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2014), pp. 44–62. 57 John Walshe, ‘New Figures Reveal 10 pc of Primary Pupils Born Overseas’, Irish Independent (25 April 2009). 58 Catherine Piola, ‘La Population irlandaise à l’aube du XXIe siècle’, Études Irlandaises, 32:2 (2007), 15–30. 59 For a more detailed and up-to-date analysis of linguistic diversity in Ireland, Piola, La Population irlandaise au XXIe siècle, pp. 178–84. 60 ‘The Irish Catholic goes Polish!’, press release on the Catholic Ireland News website, 28 July 2006, available at www.cinews.ie/article.php?artid=2506 (accessed 24 February 2013). 61 Andrew Finlay, ‘Diversity in the New Ireland:  Understanding the Census 2002’, part of a seminar organised by the Church of Ireland Broadcasting

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Committee, Dublin, on ‘ “Religion, Cultural Diversity and Pluralism in the ‘New’ Ireland”:  Diversity and Religion in Public Service Broadcasting’ (15 October 2004), available at www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=news&newsid=862 (accessed 19 June 2008). For a more in-depth analysis, see Andrew Finlay (ed.), Nationalism and Multiculturalism: Irish Identity, Citizenship and the Peace Process (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004). 62 Patsy McGarry, ‘President Tells Synod Ireland at Pivotal “Zero Hour” Moment’, Irish Times (15 May 2008). 63 Mary McAleese, quoted in Irish Times editorial, ‘Many Faiths in a Changing Ireland’ (15 May 2008). 64 Address by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD at a Reception for Churches and Faith Communities in the Structured Dialogue, 22 April 2008, available at www.taoiseach. gov.ie/eng/News/Archives/2008/Taoiseach's_Speeches_2008/Address_by_An_ Taoiseach,_Bertie_Ahern_T_D_at_a_Reception_for_Churches_and_Faith_ Communities_in_the_Structured_Dialogue_Tuesday,_22nd_April,_2008.html (accessed 14 March 2015). 65 Quotes from Bertie Ahern and Seán Brady in Patsy McGarry, ‘Ahern “Upset” by Hesitation to Publicly Debate Faith’, Irish Times (23 April 2008). 66 Penet, ‘Closer to Brussels than to Rome?’, p. 65. 67 Bertie Ahern, ‘Meeting with Pope a Reminder of Values at Heart of European Project’, Irish Times (7 July 2005). 68 Ahern, ‘Meeting with Pope’. 69 For a study of the impact of religions on the institutional construction of the European Union, see Bérengère Massignon, Des dieux et des fonctionnaires: religions et laïcités face au défi de la construction européenne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007). 70 Speech by Enda Kenny transcribed under the headline ‘Immigration Must Help to Improve Living Standards’, Irish Times (25 January 2007). 71 Letter by Hugh Cummins to the Irish Times, ‘Kenny Speech on Immigration’, Irish Times (27 January 2007). 72 For example, Proinsias De Rossa’s remarks on the Christian prayer at the opening of the Dáil during a debate on the Immigration Bill, 1999. Dáil Éireann, vol. 500, col. 374 (10 February 1999). 73 Catherine Piola, ‘Immigration et pluralisme culturel en Irlande’, in Françoise Canon-Roger (ed.), Irlande:  inclusion-exclusion (Reims:  Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2003), pp. 209–17. 74 Department of the Taoiseach, Action on Inclusion: Newsletter, 2 (November 2001), p. 1. 75 Bairbre Ní Chiosáin, ‘Insularity or Multiculturalism? Ireland and the Question of Refugees and Asylum-Seekers’, in Pascale Amiot-Jouenne (ed.), Irlande: insularité, singularité? (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 2001), p. 236. 76 As was recognised on the website of the Office for the Promotion of  Mig‑ rant Integration, www.integration.ie/website/omi/omiwebv6.nsf/page/aboutusstructures-overview-en (accessed 6 March 2014); Office of the Minister for Integration, Migration Nation: Statement on Integration Strategy and Diversity Management, 2008. 77 For a discussion on the relationship between diversity and equality and on the relative importance given to these concepts in Irish government policy, Karin Fischer, ‘Searching for a New Citizenship in the Republic of Ireland, 1990s–2000s, Equality

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or Diversity?’, in Romain Garbaye and Pauline Schnapper (eds), The Politics of Ethnic Diversity in the British Isles (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 189–204. 78 Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Immigration and Residence in Ireland: A Discussion Document (April 2005), Foreword, p. 5. 79 Fanning, Racism and Social Change, p. 186. 80 Fanning, Racism and Social Change, p. 178. 81 Department of the Taoiseach, Action on Inclusion: Newsletter on Social Inclusion, 1 (October 2001), p. 1. 82 Karin Fischer, ‘Immigration, résidence, citoyenneté:  état des lieux et débats contemporains en République d’Irlande’, in Lucienne Germain and Didier Lassalle (eds), Communauté(s), communautarisme(s): aspects comparatifs (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), pp. 171–90, at p. 185. 83 On the possible conciliation between the multicultural society and a socio-political system respecting the principle of state neutrality, Pierre-André Taguieff, La République enlisée:  pluralisme, communautarisme et citoyenneté (Paris:  Éditions des Syrtes, 2005), pp. 307–22. 84 Didier Lassalle, ‘Laïcité et communautarisme: une comparaison francobritannique’, in Lucienne Germain and Didier Lassalle (eds), Communauté(s), communautarisme(s): aspects comparatifs (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), pp. 71–90, at pp. 88–9. 85 Shalini Sinha, ‘The Right to Irishness:  Implications of Ethnicity, Nation and State towards a Truly Multi-ethnic Ireland’, in Ronit Lentin (ed.), The Expanding Nation: Towards a Multi-ethnic Ireland (Dublin: Trinity College, 1999), pp. 21–5. 86 Lee, Ireland, p. 657. 87 Dunne, ‘The Catholic School, the Democratic State and Civil Society’, p. 218. 88 Joseph Dunne, ‘Citizenship and Education:  A  Crisis of the Republic?’, in Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin (eds), Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 69–88. 89 Terence McCaughey, in ‘At the Round Table’, transcript of radio programme on RTÉ Radio 1 (3 December 2000), quoted in The Irish Review, 27 (summer 2001), p. 99. 90 John Coakley, ‘Religion, National Identity and Political Change in Modern Ireland’, in Conor McGrath and Eoin O’Malley (eds), Irish Political Studies Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 223–47, at p. 241. Coakley noted that this new nationalism tended to exclude the Northern Ireland population, however. 91 Garret FitzGerald, at the Kilmainham Symposium on ‘Vision and Values in 21st Century Ireland: What Ireland Needs from its Education System’, 9 March 2007, reproduced as ‘Civic Republicanism: Vision and Values in 21st Century Ireland’, Le Chéile: Journal of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, 1 (May 2007), pp. 29–43. 92 FitzGerald, ‘Civic Republicanism’, p. 43. 93 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’, in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 21–30. 94 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 229–30. 95 For example, Breda O’Brien (from the Iona Institute, a Catholic lobby), ‘Secular Education for All Would Deny Right to Parental Choice’, Irish Times (30 January 2010).

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96 Theo Dorgan (ed.), Foundation Stone:  Notes towards a Constitution for a 21st-Century Republic (Dublin:  New Island, 2014); Fintan O’Toole (ed.), Up the Republic! Towards a New Ireland (London: Faber & Faber, 2012); Michael D. Higgins, Renewing the Republic (Dublin:  Liberties Press, 2011); Peadar Kirby and Mary P. Murphy, Towards a Second Republic: Irish Politics after the Celtic Tiger (London: Pluto Press, 2011). 97 See Kevin Williams, ‘Religion and the Civic Space in France and Ireland’, Studies, 95:378 (2006), 129–40. 98 Declan Kiberd and Edna Longley, Multi-culturalism: The View from the Two Irelands (Armagh and Cork:  Centre for Cross-Border Studies and Cork University Press, 2001), pp. 68–9. 99 Fischer, ‘Les “Sans Religion” en République d’Irlande’. 100 Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Commission Report, ‘Ryan Report’, 20 May 2009; Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin ‘Murphy Report’ (Minister for Justice and Equality, 29 November 2009); Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Diocese of Cloyne ‘Cloyne Report’ (Department of Justice and Equality website, www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/ Cloyne-Rpt, 2011). 101 Enda Kenny, Dáil Éireann Debate, vol. 739:3 (20 July 2011). 102 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, pp. 235–84.

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Education policy and social, cultural and religious diversity: what role for schools?

In the past forty years, there has been a distinct evolution in the role of school education as defined in general policy documents and in the general curriculum guidelines issued in the Republic of Ireland. These changes have already been charted in a number of articles, in turn discussed and completed notably by Denis O’Sullivan in his 2005 book on the ‘cultural reconstruction’ of Irish education policies since the 1950s.1 Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the Republic of Ireland’s definition of priority objectives in education may be said to have moved from affirming the Gaelic-Catholic nation to consolidating an Irish and European market society, with cultural, religious and identity considerations progressively sidelined. Was there anything left of such considerations in general policy documents of the 1990s and 2000s? To what extent were social and cultural developments, in particular the cultural and religious diversification of the Irish population, taken into account in the definition of new education policies? Policy documents such as the Green and White Papers leading to the 1998 Education Act – the first general piece of legislation on education since Independence – and annual education policy reports of the Department of Education provide a basis for analysis. The religious dimension is conspicuous by its absence from such documents; we will look at the broader treatment of cultural identity, which may at least implicitly include a religious dimension. Official publications since the end of the 1990s have included statements regarding cultural diversification or, more specifically, the integration of immigrants and their children through education, with programmes on school support, anti-racism and the beginning of a discourse in favour of intercultural education. The focus on immigrant children was thus added to that on Traveller children as an integration issue in official Department of Education discourse. As we shall see, these general policy documents have had a marked tendency to reduce the notion of cultural diversity to the arrival of immigrants, with Travellers now thrown in as a native ethnic minority. What kind of socialising role has been attributed to schools in these texts? How has the State approached – or not – issues of identity (cultural and/or religious)

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transmission, inclusion and equality in the formulation of the main orientations of education policy? The ‘mercantile paradigm’ or the new driving force in education policy As we have seen, the double function of the Irish school system in conveying a sense of national identity and affirming the place of religion remained a major one until the 1960s. In his examination of what replaced the Catholic vision of education, Denis O’Sullivan remarks that most studies on the evolution of the school system implicitly rely on the theoretical model of ‘modernisation’, most authors analysing changes from that perspective.2 According to him, this approach was adopted all the more easily in Ireland as it fitted neatly with an absence of debate on educational principles, itself encouraged by the ‘anti-ideology’ orientation of Irish political culture. He notes that it was also in keeping with the main orientations of the European Commission, which boldly proclaimed ‘the end of debate on educational principles’ in its 1996 White Paper on Education and Training.3 By contrast, O’Sullivan convincingly argues that the ‘mercantile paradigm’, with its own constraints, is a more operative one than the discourse of ‘modernisation’ of a society that would like to see itself as open to the future and to the outside world, more prosperous and freed from the traditional constraints of nation, religion and economic self-sufficiency.4 O’Sullivan thus provides a detailed analysis of what he calls the shift ‘from a theocentric to a mercantile paradigm’.5 By ‘mercantile paradigm’ he means much more than a commodification of education: the term conveys the idea that the notions of market, commerce and economic utility become normative in the cultural construction of what education is, and of what it is for, in terms of its institutions, organisation, internal workings and contents. As O’Sullivan concedes, a number of elements of the ‘mercantile’ model were already present in the ‘theocentric’ model, such as the importance of ‘careerism’ in Catholic schools and educational institutions, and the trend towards social and cultural elitism.6 Conversely, as we will see, the new ‘mercantile’ model has not signalled the end of all religious influence in education. There is a striking contrast, however, between official declarations of the 1950s and 1960s on the primary function of schools – that of bringing up children in the ‘fear and love of God’ – and the aims of the school system according to documents produced notably by the National Economic and Social Council at the beginning of the 1990s. The dominant terminology was now economic, with a heavy focus on ‘consumers’, ‘management’, ‘evaluation’, ‘financial responsibility’ and ‘performance indicators’.7 Another report from the same period, dealing with industrial policy, included among its main recommendations the necessity of giving priority in the education system to the acquisition of usable and sellable skills.8 In a 1992 interview at the time of the publication of the Green Paper on education, Minister for Education Séamus Brennan, a businessman, declared, ‘We have to put an enterprise ethos into our system.’9

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The narrow utilitarian conception of education extolled in the Green Paper was widely challenged in educational circles, but it remained at the heart of education policy in later years, albeit with a few concessions (Imelda Bonel-Elliott notes that the word ‘enterprise’ had disappeared from the subsequent White Paper.10) Such an approach was also clearly encouraged at European level through the main orientations in education policy as laid out from the 2000 Lisbon strategy onwards, with their focus on the ‘knowledge economy’, competitiveness and adaptability to the labour market as the primary objectives of education.11 The 1992 Green Paper Education for a Changing World focused on the new generation’s ability to adapt to change and to new working conditions, confirming the dominant influence of economic logic in official reflections on education. It was mainly in this spirit rather than for any other reasons, such as civic values or personal growth, that the development of critical thinking was put forward as one of the main objectives of education. Indeed, the introduction highlighted ‘the need, particularly in an enterprise culture, to equip students with the ability to think and to solve problems – rather than just an accumulation of knowledge’.12 Along with other specialists of education policy, O’Sullivan notes the parallel absence of any philosophy of education in Irish official policy, based on the assumption that the aims of education are self-evident and therefore would not require any explicit formulation.13 Writing about the 1980 White Paper on education, Terence Brown had remarked that ‘in as much as it expressed any real educational philosophy at all, it was one in which technology is regarded as some kind of social panacea without which an economy cannot thrive’.14 The Programme for Action in Education 1984–87, a document published by the former political opposition, confirmed the existence of a political consensus in this respect, with a form of economic pragmatism now acting as – or in lieu of – an educational philosophy. One finds a similar, though even more critical, verdict on the evolution of governmental conceptions of the role of education in the 1980s in Joseph Lee’s history of Ireland, as he describes a move towards a strictly utilitarian and technical conception of the role of education in society that could not even claim to rest on an economic vision worthy of the name.15 This evolution denotes the growing impact of economic liberalism and New Right ideas in the dominant political vision of education in the Republic of Ireland, under the probable influence of the triumphant liberal right in Britain and the USA in the 1980s. The British and American liberal right blamed schools for a number of economic problems, claiming that they failed to teach a spirit of enterprise and needed to adapt to economic demands.16 These trends were criticised by the heads of Catholic educational institutions in the Republic of Ireland in a document published by the Conference of Major Religious Superiors in reaction to the 1992 Green Paper.17 Catholic orders expressed their opposition to the systematic imposition of economic outlooks on education, to a vision founded on individualism and competition and to a narrow definition of work.18 The same document proposed an alternative model, founded on the

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necessity of sharing power, wealth and work opportunities more equitably in society. It advocated a society ‘where there is a constant effort to move towards greater justice and equality’.19 Interestingly, as Paul Brennan noted, such an alternative model was in opposition not only to the liberal model in the Green Paper but also to the former authoritarian model espoused by the Church and Catholic orders.20 Also noteworthy was the fact that the authors chose to look at the whole of society and stressed notions of solidarity and participation, with the common good as an overall goal. In education, this meant giving priority to equality, citizenship and the emancipatory potential of education for a democratic public life.21 Such principles were at odds with both the former and the new models, and they did not form a basis of discussion for subsequent expressions of Catholic intent in education, as church leaders tended to fall back on a defence of the specific interests and aims of Catholic schools, ‘the slippage in discourse from common good to sectional interests [being] difficult to avoid’.22 Cultural and religious dimensions marginalised? As early as 1964, David Thornley contended that considerations of economic efficiency would take over from traditional controversies in education.23 In his analysis of an official report on the education system commissioned by the government in 1962, Terence Brown confirmed that the cultural imperative had now been abandoned: So instead of an Irish Educational document reflecting on national identity, on the revival of Irish or on cultural imperatives of one kind or another, Investment in Education dissected the social facts of Irish education, to reveal the class and geographical components of the system.24

The report had been partly financed by the OECD, and, in his 1971 history of contemporary Ireland, F. S. L. Lyons saw this joint participation as a symbol of the changing psychological and ideological climate of the 1960s.25 In the new primary-school curriculum of 1971, the formulation of general educational aims had become centred on the child and on their place in society, another indication that nationalist political objectives had lost their priority status: 1 To enable the child to live a full life as a child. 2 To equip him to avail himself of further education so that he may go on to live a full and useful life as an adult in society.26

As we saw earlier, however, the place of God in schools remained undisputed. Despite the apparent evolution towards a more child-centred vision of education, the shift in stated aims did not amount to any radical rejection of tradition, as the 1971 Teachers’ Handbook shows. The aim was, rather, to reach a balance between tradition and what was now seen as inevitable social change; to inculcate a sense of national identity that was still founded on cultural and

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religious continuity, while educating citizens who would be adaptable and open to change; and to strengthen the sense of belonging to the community while making sure that people would be open to new ideas. A  Department of Education leaflet distributed to parents (for their information as well as to reassure them, perhaps) summarised this ambivalent search for balance (under the title ‘Educate for Tomorrow’) in the following way: Does everything in education change? Of course not. Education, after all, is the means by which we pass on to our children those unchanging moral and cultural values that are their heritage. But we must re-state those values in terms that a new generation can understand and accept.27

While introducing few actual changes, the 1980 White Paper on Education formulated official educational aims (for both primary and secondary schools) that were still reminiscent of the dominant conceptions to be found at the end of the 1960s:28 An educational system serves a dual purpose – to conserve traditional values and to prepare for the future. It provides for the task of interpreting the essential features of a social and cultural heritage and, at the same time, that of preparing the young for life in a society characterised by ever-accelerating change.29

In the course of the 1980s, however, there was a shift towards the second objective to the detriment of the first, with new, more economically driven guidelines apparent at the beginning of the 1990s. The development of a sense of belonging to Ireland, and now also to Europe, still figured among the general aims of education enumerated in the 1992 Green Paper, as did the aim of raising awareness of the role of the citizen in both political contexts. Its authors expressed ‘the need to educate young people for their role as citizens of Europe, while retaining and strengthening their distinctive Irish identity and culture’, and to ensure ‘that Ireland’s young people acquire a keen awareness of their national and European heritage and identity’.30 The parallel presentation of the Irish and European dimensions was a new development. It was reaffirmed in the 1995 White Paper, which insisted on the importance of developing a more European-centred curriculum.31 Meanwhile, the main cultural message in both the Green and White Papers remained that of preserving and transmitting a certain Irish culture: Ireland has a rich cultural heritage, and the education system has an important role to play in its preservation and development. It does this by inculcating a strong sense of pride in being Irish, through an emphasis on the Irish language and traditions, Irish literature, music and other cultural endeavours.32

The richness of Irish cultural heritage was reaffirmed, but without any attempt to acknowledge its diversity, and with a strong hint of nationalist conservatism in the notion of national pride. The development of many other aspects of education policy showed that the explicitly national and cultural dimension of

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education, though it still appeared in official documents, was taken for granted rather than being deemed a priority. The fact that History did not figure in the list of compulsory subjects at post-primary level in the 1995 White Paper was in itself revealing of the importance accorded to the national heritage in education, in spite of declarations to the contrary. The resulting outcry at the time led to History being reinstated as a compulsory subject (though there have been sporadic attempts to downgrade it since then).33 Even more strikingly, the explicitly religious objectives that were given pride of place in the 1971 primary-school curriculum had disappeared from general education policy guidelines by the 1990s. The first educational aim specified in the 1995 White Paper was ‘to foster an understanding and critical appreciation of the values – moral, spiritual, religious, social and cultural – which have been distinctive in shaping Irish society and which have been traditionally accorded respect in society’.34 The very idea of critical appreciation and the cautious formulation marked a departure from declarations of the 1960s and 1970s on the heritage of ‘unchanging moral and cultural values’ to be transmitted to children, even if these traditional values were still to be an object of particular attention in schools. Critics claimed the 1992 Green Paper did not grant sufficient attention to religion and its role in Irish education; new choices in formulation did indicate that the Irish State seemed to be distancing itself from a strictly Christian perspective on education.35 Religion in schools had taken a back seat or had all but disappeared from the primary concerns of successive Irish governments. The sharing of roles with the Churches within the education system meant, however, that the absence of explicit reference did not have to equate with any actual questioning of its continuing presence. From the 1990s onwards, the country’s ‘economic, social and cultural development’ took pride of place among the stated aims of education, while the child-centred perspectives that had been introduced in Ireland in the late 1960s and 1970s in the wake of international pedagogical movements were pushed into the background, as was the defence of cultural heritage. The notion of the child’s individual development reappeared among the main objectives of education in the 2003 annual report of the Department of Education (as well as in subsequent reports), but with little in the way of any practical definition of what this might mean in terms of overall educational vision and curricula. Economic objectives have remained central, accompanied by expressions of intent regarding the reduction of social inequalities in education, while the discourse of cultural preservation and transmission has largely been discarded. The lexical field of ‘values’ has also disappeared from the formulation of the general aims of education policy as they appear in these publications, which are now infused instead with the language of corporate business, such as ‘mission statements’, ‘stakeholders’ and ‘high-level goals’. Apart from slight inflections in formulation, the stated aims of education policy changed little between the 1990s and 2000s. The word ‘inclusion’ made

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its appearance, but was understood in terms of equality of opportunity, and hence in a socio-economic sense. The phrase ‘equality of opportunity’ replaced the word ‘equity’ in the more recent documents, with the concept of full equality being largely absent from official publications. In the Department of Education and Science annual reports from 2000 to 2002, ‘promoting equity and inclusion’ ranked first among the five key objectives listed by the government.36 From the 2003 report, the first two key objectives identified (out of five) became the following: 1 We will deliver an education that is relevant to individuals’ personal, social, cultural and economic needs. 2 We will support, through education, a socially inclusive society with equal opportunity for all.37

There was no significant change, the notion of equality of opportunity replacing that of ‘equity’ while the ‘socially inclusive society’ echoed the idea of ‘inclusion’ in previous reports. The cultural dimension of individual development reappeared in the formulation but not in the detail of the annual reports themselves. In the main education-policy publications, it is still the socio-economic dimension of ‘social inclusion’ that prevails rather than its cultural or civic (rights-based) dimensions, except for the ‘anti-racist’ discourse that has started to appear in recent years. The cultural and citizenship dimensions of education are never mentioned as part of the aims of schooling in the prefaces to annual reports written by successive ministers for education in the 2000s. Neither do they occupy any significant space in the reports themselves, even though the second part of the Department of Education’s ‘mission statement’ includes ‘contributing to the social, cultural and economic development of Ireland’, and the ‘cultural needs’ of the individual are mentioned in the formulation of the first part from the 2003 report onwards. The cultural dimension of education was almost absent from the sections on ‘supporting an inclusive society’ throughout the 2000s, apart from brief allusions to intercultural education in the context of the school integration of Traveller children, and was completely absent from the sections dealing with ‘an education that is relevant to individuals’ personal, social, cultural and economic needs’, despite the presence of the adjective ‘cultural’ in this stated primary objective. In a rare exception, Noel Dempsey, then Minister for Education, explicitly mentioned the link between education and national cohesion in his preface to the 2002 report: ‘Education is also crucial to our economic and social development – so our investment in the education of each individual is in turn linked to our well-being and cohesion as a nation.’38 Such aspects were not completely ignored in education policy, but their absence from annual reports put them in a subordinate position in comparison with other objectives assigned to schools, while the phrase ‘social and cultural development’ remained conveniently vague and neutral in ideological terms.

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An abstract and limited celebration of pluralism in the 1990s If we put aside considerations as to whether such a development was good or bad for Irish society as a whole, the shift in education policy from cultural nationalism and a Christian outlook to the ability to adapt to economic and social change could be seen as opening the school system to the profound changes in Irish society, from a socio-cultural (including religious) perspective.39 In effect, there was a new stress on the concept of pluralism at the beginning of the 1990s. It appeared in the 1995 White Paper among the essential educational principles that were presented as stemming directly from ‘the fundamental aim of education’, i.e. ‘to serve individual, social and economic well-being and to enhance quality of life’.40 Since there was also a passage on the importance of inculcating a sense of national pride through the transmission of the country’s rich cultural heritage, the question remained of what was meant by ‘pluralism’ in such policy documents. The section entitled ‘Pluralism’ in the White Paper was in fact mainly focused on the importance of recognising the multidimensional character of human development and of allowing each individual to reach their potential and live a full life (along with ‘a sense of individual responsibility to oneself and to the different dimensions of community’).41 Despite the title of the section, there was no explanation of what pluralism might mean in education. To conclude the section, the authors stressed that ‘The policy-making framework should embrace the intellectual and cultural heritage of the past’, defined as ‘the knowledge, beliefs, values and traditions transformed and transmitted through succeeding generations’.42 This certainly did not amount to a recognition of cultural or religious pluralism in Ireland, and the priority in this regard seemed to associate ‘pluralism’ with the existence of different types of schools rather than with a recognition of individual differences within Irish society. Indeed, according to the authors, ‘the State should serve the educational rights of its citizens to participate in and benefit from education in accordance with each individual’s needs and abilities and the nation’s resources’, but only ‘within a framework which entitles individual schools and colleges to promote their philosophical values’.43 The primacy given to the existing structural framework and to the right of each school (patron) to preserve and assert its specific character over individual rights has been systematically reaffirmed in subsequent official publications, as we will see in the following chapters. Other passages of the White Paper detailing educational aims did emphasise openness to others. Part of the role of education was now to ‘nurture a sense of personal identity […] combined with a respect for the rights and beliefs of others’.44 There was an interesting semantic shift between the Green and the White Papers: the 1992 Green Paper had specifically evoked the necessity for children to ‘develop an understanding of their own religious beliefs and a tolerance for the beliefs of others’.45 In other words, in the 1995 document, religious belief was not mentioned as a necessary part of personal identity any more, while the notion of ‘respect’ now replaced the weaker concept of ‘tolerance’.

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Apart from this particular evolution, most formulations dealing with ‘pluralism’ and identity in education remained close to the type of statement that could be found in a report on adult education published ten years earlier. The 1984 report Lifelong Learning, while acknowledging that there was an erosion of traditional customs and beliefs in Ireland, attempted to reconcile the idea of a transmission – and thus preservation and maintenance – of these traditions and values (their plural character being mentioned, though in a rather convoluted way) with that of a tentative openness to pluralism: ‘The tasks of adult educators are related to the need to encourage the healthy maintenance of those traditions and values which are seen as essential to our differing identities and, in prevailing circumstances, to foster a growing acceptance of pluralism.’46 In such a context, ‘pluralism’ seemed to be more of an add-on to existing circumstances, rather than an integral part of Irish society, and this outlook extended to its place in education. There was no fundamental difference between the way the notion of pluralism was understood and dealt with in the 1984 report and in the 1995 White Paper, despite significant social developments within the intervening decade. The rhetorics of values or the implicit heritage of Christianity In the 1995 White Paper, the values considered as ‘characteristic’ or even ‘essential’ in the development of Irish society retained a privileged place, even if qualified by the idea of their being ‘critically appreciated’. Those values explicitly related principally to the ‘moral, spiritual and religious’ domains, with the adjectives ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ seemingly added for good measure, but with no further definition or explanation. Conversely, there was no mention at any stage of values of a civic or democratic nature, or related to human rights. The fact that the authors of the White Paper chose to annex the Preamble of the 1937 Constitution (along with Articles 40.1, 42 and 44, habitually mentioned as pertaining to education) among the ‘applicable constitutional dispositions’ may also be interpreted as an implicit embrace of the Preamble’s traditional message on Irish identity. While these allusions to moral values were generally formulated in tandem with cultural values (again with little or no explanation of what these might be), the religious dimension indirectly found a place in the curriculum itself in the shape of ‘moral and spiritual development’ (rather than ethical and philosophical, for example). ‘Values’ and their treatment in such official documents remain marked by a persistent vagueness, and by a strong tendency to associate values with the religious domain rather than the civic or democratic one, in joint formulations such as ‘traditions and values’ or in vague enumerations like ‘moral, spiritual, religious, social and cultural values’. Such a trend is in keeping with the long-held belief in Ireland that moral values are intrinsically Christian or at least that morality cannot exist outside of religion.

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From this perspective, the discourse on ‘values’ in Irish education policy documents may be seen as a good illustration of what Michel Foucault has called a ‘historical a priori’ (or preconceived idea).47 No need is felt to define these values, as the term itself is expected to speak for itself and to be understood in the same way by a predetermined – and unchanging – Irish collective consciousness. For the managers of Catholic schools, there is no doubt that these ‘values’ mentioned in official documents are the Christian values that their schools are called upon to pass them on, as they form the basis of moral and spiritual teaching. This view was highlighted by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in a 2007 policy document on Catholic primary schools.48 These values are seen as taking precedence over any other values that the State might put forward in the mission of Catholic schools. To illustrate their outlook, the bishops quoted an extract from the 1965 Second Vatican Council Declaration on Christian Education: ‘The Catholic school also seeks “to promote the Christian concept of the world whereby the natural values, assimilated into the full understanding of man redeemed by Christ, may contribute to the good of society as a whole” ’. The very vagueness of the treatment of ‘values’ in official documents (when they appear at all) lends itself to a Christian interpretation through the prism of ‘natural law’ religious morality, especially given the historical prevalence of Catholicism in the Irish State. Conversely, authors of the Green and White Papers of 1992 and 1995 did not go as far as adopting explicitly corporate or business values in education, even though such values were clearly meant to be imparted to students.49 Such seemingly self-evident values may be quoted as yet more examples of the ‘euphemistic, disembodied and hyperpolite discursive strategies’ whose use Jim Deegan denounces in his study of governmental documents dealing with children.50 Towards some recognition of socio-cultural diversity and discrimination issues in the 2000s For much of the 2000s, the religious dimension remained mostly implicit in cultural considerations of the new Irish diversity in official publications and was ignored in passages on discrimination. While some progress was made, new signs of openness or awareness remained symptomatic of a specific and narrow viewpoint on both ‘cultural diversity’ and inequality, leading to sometimes ambivalent, or even contradictory, results. Though not dealing explicitly with the religious dimension, Jim Deegan has explored the general treatment of children’s diversity in education policy discourses of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Recognising that the formulation of a National Children’s Strategy in 2000 was a positive development, he remarks however that the 1999 White Paper on Early Childhood Education ‘significantly negates any kind of broad-based commitment to confronting social injustices and oppression related to diversity’.51 The White Paper, along with annual education policy reports in the following years, thus tended to

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contradict the vision proposed in the 2000 document, which claimed to define a ‘national strategy’ for ‘an Ireland where children are respected as young citizens with a valued contribution to make and a voice of their own; where all children are cherished and supported by family and the wider society’.52 According to Deegan, the National Strategy potentially heralded what Nicholas Lee, the British author of a 2001 work on the relationship between children and society, described as ‘a universal place’ for ‘a universal citizen child’ to be found in a future Ireland.53 In the document’s preamble, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern made an explicit link between this ‘National Strategy’ document and the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child. Noting the contradiction between the 1999 White Paper and the 2000 National Strategy document, Deegan questioned whether it was the sign of an actual evolution in educational and cultural terms. Some years later, one may safely assert that this was not in fact the case. Deegan thus noted a contrast between general policy discourses on children and education policy discourses. Along with Bryan Fanning, and beyond these internal contradictions within official discourse related to children, he also noted the contrast between discourse and practice, highlighting in particular the dismal treatment of children of asylum-seekers in the Republic of Ireland.54 In the social and educational domains, both authors have shown how official practices have led to all but complete exclusion of these children, such exclusion being apparent even in official publications priding themselves in catering for ‘all children’ in the Republic of Ireland.55 Jim Deegan’s conclusion to his article took the form of a warning: ‘Should we continue to pursue a discernible line of policy and practice for children and diversity without equality for all, then we will continue to produce and reproduce silence and invisibility – intentionally and not otherwise.’56 Contradictory policy discourses and practices, and especially the declarations of intent in the National Children’s Strategy, all have a bearing on what interests us here, whether directly or indirectly, even if these considerations on children’s diversity (whether written by government officials or by researchers in Ireland) tend to ignore the issue of religion. A more detailed analysis of the contrast between government discourse on implementing the International Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Irish State and outstanding issues related to the place of religion in education will be proposed in the following chapters. A study of annual reports from the Department of Education in the 2000s confirms Deegan’s analysis of other official documents of the same period and especially the gap between the rhetoric of ‘respect for all children’ in the 2000 National Children’s Strategy and the dominant outlook in education policy documents. There is never any attempt in education policy discourses dealing with the role of schools to tackle or even mention in any systematic way the different discrimination grounds as identified by the Irish Equality Authority (and in Irish equality legislation of the late 1990s, early 2000s). Apart from the issue of social disadvantage, authors of these annual reports

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choose to deal only with a range of specific problems related to some of these grounds. The section entitled ‘Promotion of Equity and Inclusion’ of the Department of Education’s 2000 report was thus exclusively devoted to an overview of programmes related to socially disadvantaged children, Traveller children and children with special needs. In the section on inclusion policy, the 2002 report pointed to some new developments, starting with the subsection devoted to Traveller children, which now presented an ‘intercultural approach’ as a key policy of the Department, in line with the new Guidelines on Traveller Education published the same year.57 There was also a new subsection entitled ‘Educational Dispositions for Non-nationals in Ireland’. Its authors asserted that ‘Ireland [was] in the process of transforming itself into a multi-ethnic society’ and that this was bound to have implications for educational dispositions. Department initiatives aiming to take this ‘growing ethnic diversity’ into account within the school system were mentioned, namely the financing of English-language-support programmes and the publication of a brochure on asylum-seekers for school use. ‘International pupils’ were also alluded to in the introduction to the 2006 annual report by Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin, in relation to the recruitment of teachers of English as a foreign language.58 From the 2003 report onwards, there was a new section on promoting sex equality (‘Objective 2.6’), which was the only aspect of anti-discrimination policy explicitly added to the list detailing objectives related to ‘support[ing] an inclusive society’, along with the socio-economic dimension and with Traveller and special-needs children. Similar choices were made in the general introduction to the 1999 primary-school curriculum, whose section on ‘Equality and Fairness of Access’ only dealt with potential discrimination on socio-economic and gender grounds.59 A short paragraph on ‘new arrivals in Ireland’ in the 2005 report specified that a committee had been created by the Department of Education in June 2005 to coordinate measures addressing the educational needs of these new arrivals (with a focus on language needs essentially).60 There was nothing on this topic in the following report however, which went back to the usual sections. The issue of intercultural education was again only mentioned with reference to Traveller children and to the role of the forty ‘school visitors’ employed to facilitate Traveller children’s participation within the school system:  ‘The Visiting Teacher works with families and schools to maximise participation and attainment and promote intercultural education for all.’61 The phrase ‘newly arrived children’ used in the mid 2000s reports is worth a mention here. Within a few years it became a shorthand in educational circles in the Republic of Ireland to designate both immigrant children and children born in Ireland of immigrant parents. It replaced the negative phrase ‘non-national children’ that had been used at first in official publications, and its use seemed to be well meaning, as it also avoided the problematic terminology of ‘second-generation immigrant’ (often found in England). There was still a lingering ambiguity however, as it made no distinction between children

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born in Ireland of immigrant parents and immigrant children. While the former were not any more ‘newly arrived’ than their counterparts whose parents happened to be Irish, they were also likely not to have quite the same educational needs as children who had just come into the country. To come back to the main point, there was in the early to mid 2000s an attempt by the Department of Education to take into account some elements of Irish social diversity, along with some of the existing discrimination issues within the education system, as part of its efforts to reach the stated aim of the ‘inclusive society’. The vision defined by the National Children’s Strategy in 2000, founded on the notion of equal respect for all children as young citizens, seemed to herald a potential rethinking of policy orientations in education. Education policy discourses remained much narrower and limited in scope, however, and far from any systematic treatment of issues of discrimination still affecting children in Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century. While the new focus on gender equality was a mark of progress, the issue of religious discrimination was simply never broached in general overviews of education policy to do with social inclusion and equality up to the 2011 change of government. Teaching organisations and other educational actors on the need for a national policy From the mid 1990s onwards, teaching organisations started denouncing the government’s lack of action in the face of social change. The INTO, representing the majority of primary-school teachers, exposed the absence of a national policy regarding the new immigration and the specific needs of immigrant children. In its analyses and policy recommendations, it also tried to take into account the reality of social diversification in schools in a wider perspective. As far as immigrant children and their needs were concerned, the INTO showed how piecemeal and insufficient the first few government measures were in the 1990s. Schools had to wait until 1999 for a systematic language-support programme to be put in place.62 Ten years later, just when schools were beginning to be able to build on these experiences, the 2009 national budget included drastic reductions to this programme among its first cuts following the financial crisis. Various educational actors warned against the assumption that all or most immigrants would now leave (immigrant families were in fact more likely to stay), as well as against the tendency to consider such programmes as being outside the range of social priorities. For example, in 2008, a primary school in a Dublin suburb with a very significant intake of ‘newly arrived’ immigrant children (nearly 400 children of forty-seven nationalities and almost as many languages) had seen the number of its language-support teachers fall from nine to six. The 2009 public-service cuts reduced this number to two teachers, while the needs remained the same, as was pointed out in an interview on RTÉ Radio 1 by Enda McGorman, head of the school at the time.63

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The INTO clearly took the lead in a number of related areas, spurring successive governments into belated action. In its seventy-page 1998 booklet The Challenge of Diversity: Education Support for Ethnic Minority Children, the organisation had provided an in-depth analysis of the situation in schools and had come up with a wide range of recommendations. The first government publication dealing specifically with ‘non-national children’ in 2000, and the specific budget line devoted to language-support programmes from the same period, represented partial responses to these recommendations but fell far short of the State-wide, comprehensive policy the INTO was calling for: The INTO is concerned that the current debate on educational policy formulation does not do full justice to the global issues identified by the White Paper in relation to educational provision for ethnic minority children. As evident in this report, there appears to be no national strategy in place to cope with the increasing numbers of ethnic minority children being enrolled in primary schools.64

The INTO logically focused on the importance of language support but went much further in its recommendations, insisting on the necessity of addressing issues of multicultural education and equal access to education, in line with both UN and EU texts. Authors of the booklet  also recommended the development of classes on immigrant children’s mother tongues and cultures, but this was not taken up in any way at national level.65 In their conclusion, they insisted on the development of intercultural education as the best means to combat racism and xenophobia within Irish society. Building on the willingness of many teachers to adapt their practices and educational objectives to socio-cultural transformations, teacher organisations (the INTO at primary level, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland [TUI] and Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland [ASTI] at secondary level, but also the Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education [IATSE]) have largely embraced and developed a discourse of inclusiveness founded on the concept of intercultural education.66 Since 1999, various curriculum initiatives have attempted to respond to these calls from teachers, with intercultural guidelines being formulated at cross-curricular level in the mid 2000s, as we will see. In a 2004 joint publication with the Equality Authority on issues of equality and inclusion in education, the INTO also showed that it was willing to address such issues head on and in a comprehensive way, by basing discussions and recommendations on international documents (especially from the UN) and on the different discrimination grounds defined by the Irish Equality Authority, in contrast with the much narrower scope and piecemeal approach privileged by successive governments.67 The specific positions of Irish teacher organisations regarding the place of religion in schools, which have also contrasted with the main political trends, especially at primary level, will be examined in subsequent chapters. In parallel to these reflections and calls on the part of teacher organisations, there have been a number of local initiatives, especially in areas in and around Dublin that were more directly affected by a rising immigrant population.

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In Clondalkin, a Report on Cultural Diversity was published in May 2000 by the Clondalkin Travellers’ Development Group.68 The report made a number of suggestions for the development of an intercultural strategy, taking into account the presence of both Traveller and immigrant children in the schools. Another report published in 2007 focused on the experience of schools in the Dublin 15 area. Written by Enda McGorman, and Ciaran Sugrue (who then taught at St Patrick’s College, the teacher-training centre in Drumcondra), it was entitled Intercultural Education: Primary Challenges in Dublin 15.69 Financial support for the project had been provided by the Social Inclusion Unit of the Department of Education and Science at the behest of Brian Lenihan, who was then Minister of State for Children. In his speech at the launch of the report, Lenihan contended that ‘all patrons are sincere, but there is still a problem. […] Integration is impossible under our current system of patronage.’70 The results of a survey in Dublin 15 highlighted the discriminatory practices at enrolment related to the denominational character of schools. The authors noted that school heads and teachers, along with many parents, felt let down by the government’s refusal to tackle the issue at a national level.71 They quoted former Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald, ‘one of the more impartial commentators’, who had declared a few weeks earlier that a complete overhaul of the primary-school system had become necessary.72 From the late 1990s onwards, international observers started to join these local calls for change. In 1998, a report from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child charged with monitoring adherence to the 1989 International Convention for Children’s Rights, which had been ratified by the Irish State, noted ‘the difficulties still faced by children from vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, including […] refugee children, as to the enjoyment of their fundamental rights, including access to education’. As we shall see, in the following years, the same committee also raised questions about the impact of the denominational structure of the education system on children’s rights. The new intercultural discourse in education and the issue of religion While calls coming from educational circles locally or from an international body like the UN have so far failed to result in a full reappraisal of education policy on the basis of fundamental rights, they have led to the development of a political discourse in favour of intercultural and anti-racist education since the early 2000s. Although this new discourse has remained at the periphery of the main policy orientations, as we have seen, a number of educational documents and official publications have gradually become permeated with intercultural education principles. The main driving forces behind this development have been teacher organisations and minority groups such as those representing Irish Travellers, who were able to draw from various international influences such as that of the Council of Europe from the 1980s onwards.73 These groups’ guidelines

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promoting intercultural education were themselves influenced by the work of researchers such as psycho-sociologist Carmel Camilleri, who contributed to conceptualising the notion at an international level and developed a theoretical reflection on the move from multicultural to intercultural approaches of education.74 In 1996, John O’Connell, then head of the Pavee Point Travellers’ Centre (now Traveller and Roma Centre), denounced government inaction in anti-racist education, pointing out that a parliamentary commission of the EU had recommended in 1991 that all member states introduce anti-racist programmes in primary schools, a recommendation which had been ignored until then in the Republic of Ireland.75 The first anti-racist education initiatives at national level in Ireland stemmed directly from the Council of Europe, as part of the European Year against Racism in 1997, with the distribution of material on the subject in schools. There was a reference to the dangers of racism and xenophobia and to their ‘apparent resurgence in a number of countries’ in the 1995 White Paper, which went on to stress ‘the importance of education in fields such as human rights, tolerance, mutual understanding, cultural identity, peace and the promotion of world cooperation between people of different traditions and beliefs’, but the wording lent itself to an interpretation of racism and xenophobia as international issues that did not concern Ireland directly.76 At the time, the INTO interpreted these sentences more positively as a sign of recognition of the importance of multicultural education by the government, but it was then disappointed not to find any explicit commitment to intercultural education in the 1997 Education Bill.77 By contrast, the 1994 report on the National Convention on Education had explicitly referred to the growing diversity of the school population and insisted on the necessity of developing intercultural education programmes, even if the number of children who belonged to ‘ethnic minorities’ could still be considered as limited: such programmes should also reflect the culture of other ethnic minorities, as well as that of Travellers. The school population is changing and already includes minority groups such as Muslim, Vietnamese children and children from Bosnia. Appreciation of the value of other cultures has little to do with the numerical size of the group in the population.78

The first initiatives in this regard were encouraged or supported not by the Department of Education but by the Department of Foreign Affairs (through the medium of development education) and the Department of Justice (notably through reports on the integration of refugees and the setting up of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism). The National Committee for Development Education (NCDE) was asked to provide support for the production of educational resources and for the organisation of training sessions for teachers. Since its creation in 1994, it has been directly developing course materials as well as giving financial support to local development education projects. These projects were at

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first meant to promote better knowledge of international developments and interdependence, and raise awareness about the necessity of solidarity on a world scale, but they progressively came to include local projects such as the development of a whole-school plan for the integration of refugee and immigrant children.79 There may have been a certain logic to the NCDE being asked to provide school support in this area, since it had already specialised in developing resources for class use, but these resources were not necessarily adapted to the very different situation of the immigrant children in Irish schools. The NCDE had been put in place under the aegis of the Department of Foreign Affairs and was directly dependent on it for funding, as part of Ireland Aid, the Irish government’s official programme for development cooperation. The Department of Foreign Affairs thus found itself directly involved in educational projects related to the presence of immigrant children in Ireland, with funds that had been intended for international development cooperation. The Department of Education did adopt an official stance in favour of intercultural education from the early 2000s onwards. The need for intercultural education was first explicitly, if briefly, evoked in the 2000 White Paper on Adult Education.80 It was then taken up in the department’s information leaflet on asylum-seekers (mentioned above), and further developed in two sets of guidelines on the education of Traveller children published in 2002.81 The 2001 information leaflet for schools advocated the inclusion of a clear anti-racist stance in all schools’ global plans, with a commitment to promote tolerance, mutual respect and an understanding of ‘cultural, ethnic, racial, social and religious diversity as part of an intercultural ethos’.82 This was one of the rare explicit references to religion in an official text dealing with ‘diversity’. In 2002, the Department of Education launched a consultation process over a more wide-ranging plan to promote anti-racism and interculturalism in education, as part of the National Action Plan against Racism.83 This consultation process was to be managed by the Curriculum Development Unit of the City of Dublin VEC. This research and curriculum development unit was created in 1972 under the joint aegis of Trinity College, Dublin, the Department of Education and Science and the Dublin VEC. It became involved in a number of progressive educational projects (including textbook production), whose scope far exceeded vocational education. A steering committee nominated by the Department of Education oversaw the work of this unit in 2002, which meant that the ensuing report (with results from the consultation process and a series of recommendations) could not be considered as coming from a fully independent body.84 This might go some way towards explaining some internal contradictions or tensions in the report regarding the definition and goals of intercultural education. When introducing their recommendations, the authors stressed that the term ‘interculturalism’ involved an acceptance of the principle of equality of rights and values, as well as ‘the development of policies to promote interaction, collaboration and exchange with people of different cultures, ethnicity

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or religion’.85 The general framework adopted for the document was also explicitly set out as being that of human rights, democracy and equality, with the support of international conventions on the principles of non-discrimination. The authors took up the extract from the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child on the right to equal treatment for all children, regardless of race, skin colour, gender, language, religion, political or other opinions, national, ethnic or social origin, potential special needs or status at birth (whether theirs or those of their parents or legal guardians).86 The term ‘interculturalism’ was then first understood in its widest sense, with the authors including issues of gender, age, special needs and socio-economic background, and stressing the importance of an inclusive and systemic approach in the field of education, so that diversity in all its forms should be accepted as the norm.87 But then the scope of the report itself was deliberately narrowed down to ‘issues of ethnicity and Traveller inclusion’, in keeping with the specific government focus as part of the Action Plan against Racism.88 The authors insisted all the while, however, that the wider context should be kept in mind regarding equality issues and that the recommendations might also be found relevant in other fields and in relation to other groups, as part of the wider goal of equality and social inclusion within the school system. In the report’s following presentation of the ‘demographic background’, the Muslim and Jewish ‘communities’ were mentioned among the various ‘ethnic groups’ established in the Republic of Ireland (the other groups explicitly mentioned being the Chinese, Italian and Traveller ‘communities’), without any specific reference to religious diversity (or to the complex and diverse nature of these communities, for that matter).89 In keeping with the narrower focus imposed by the government, all potentially problematic elements pertaining to the religious dimension of education in Ireland were ignored, despite the otherwise sweeping overview in the report of the government guidelines and pieces of legislation on equality and education in the 1990s and up to 2002. No mention was made of religious education in the presentation of curriculum developments, apart from ‘Religious Education’ (or ‘Religion’) being included once in the list of subjects within which ‘there are opportunities … to look explicitly at the issue of interculturalism and anti-racism’.90 In the end, the terms ‘interculturalism’ and ‘anti-racism’ become used in tandem so often in the report that they appear as almost synonymous, one all but reduced to the other. While it is obvious from other parts of the report that the authors were aware of the necessity for a wide and ambitious conception of interculturalism, and while government efforts to combat racism may be commended, the end result of this particular choice of angle was that a number of issues, including religion, were ignored, despite their relevance to promoting interculturalism and combating discrimination in the school system. In the summary of results from the consultation process, however, some elements pointed to the religious dimension, sometimes implicitly, especially in the section on ‘Ethos’. According to the authors, ‘There are non-negotiable human rights values which pose challenges to all cultures,

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majority as well as minority. Celebrating the real diversity in Irish society requires that majority traditions are not privileged or imposed as “normal” on minorities.’91 Also, according to them, ‘All students and learners belong in a diverse Irish, European and global society. Therefore, an anti-racist intercultural ethos is necessary whether or not the local population is ethnically diverse.’92 Within an Irish context, one may find in these quotes a clear allusion to the religious dimension of ‘majority traditions’, as the authors warn against cultural or identity traits or majority norms being abusively imposed on others, but the religious element remains implicit. At the end of the section on ‘Ethos’, the authors mentioned ‘a small minority of submissions’ pertaining to the school curriculum that ‘proposed that Irish heritage and values be taught as the norm, into which all groups would fit’.93 The authors remarked that such views, while held by only a small minority of contributions, were often expressed in the media and in public arenas. In response they contended that, Majority group traditions and values – cultural practices, religious traditions and Irish language – must be fully respected if a curriculum is to be truly intercultural. However, while all learners, indigenous and immigrant, need to learn about these traditions and values, this must be accompanied by critical reflection on power relations between majority and minority groups.94

By way of conclusion, they then chose to repeat their introductory statements on non-negotiable human-rights values and on the importance of making sure majority traditions would not be imposed as the norm. In spite of such statements, and apart from a brief mention of the problem of school enrolment policies that gave priority to particular religious affiliations, the authors did not tackle the wider issue of the denominational nature of the Irish school system.95 The one recommendation specifically related to the religious issue was the following: ‘National and local policies should explicitly register principles of inclusion and anti-discrimination relating to ethnic identity, religious affiliation, economic status, prior education experience and qualifications, and residency in Ireland.’96 As we shall see, that particular recommendation was not followed up at national level as far as religious affiliation was concerned. The 2002 report did stress, however, the need to question traditional conceptions and the importance of reviewing all curricula from an intercultural perspective. They insisted that principles of human rights, equality and interculturalism should be taught at all levels and should form part of the basic curriculum for initial and in-service training for teachers and for all school staff, seeing this as a way to raise awareness and to challenge ‘long-held unconscious beliefs’ or opinions97 – one of the fundamental aims of a true intercultural education, as defined by Carmel Camilleri.98 The authors also declared that ‘future policies must be developed within the context of [a]‌rights-based equality approach, catering for diversity as the norm’

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and that this should be done in a systemic way (‘This approach needs to be taken account of in the intrinsic design of systems’).99 Related recommendations remained vague, however, the government being invited to set out a ‘clear political framework supported by a dialogue with interest groups’ at national level. The report finally led to the publication of two sets of guidelines on intercultural education by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in 2005 and 2006. The guidelines were distributed to all primary and post-primary schools.100 The NCCA had called on researchers such as Roland Tormey of the University of Limerick, who was the main author, as well as on the Centre for Educational Disadvantage Research at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick’s teacher-training college. These guidelines will be examined in detail in the following chapter. Almost ten years after their publication, they still represent the main effort at national level to encourage intercultural education in schools. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, recommendations for a systemic approach to education policy founded on human rights and non-discrimination have not been acted upon since. The consequences of the refusal to tackle issues of religious discrimination in a systemic way at governmental level – in spite of some tentative moves since 2011 – will be examined in the following chapters. Despite the disappearance of explicit references to religion in the more recent official definitions of the role of schools in Irish society (apart from the vague though still significant allusions to ‘values’), it could still be considered that ‘the Irish State, through the educational system, has adopted and continues to adopt [a role] towards promoting religious identity’.101 While the State may have stopped explicitly presenting National Schools as a privileged vessel for the transmission of the Christian faith, the place accorded to religion, and specifically to Christianity, in the structure of the school system as well as through religious education curricula, is still prominent enough to confirm such a statement, as we will see. Notes 1 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education. 2 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 103. 3 European Commission, White Paper on Education and Training: Teaching and Learning – Towards the Learning Society (Luxembourg:  Office for Official Publications of the European Communities,1996), p. 42. 4 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 105. 5 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 101 ff. 6 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 125 ff. 7 National Economic and Social Council, A Strategy for the Nineties (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1990), pp. 313–14. Quoted in O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 110. 8 Industrial Policy Review Group, A Time for Change:  Industrial Policy for the 1990s, ‘Culliton Report’ (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1992), p. 52.

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9 Interview in the Sunday Press (28 June 1992), quoted in Imelda Bonel-Elliott, ‘La Représentation du système éducatif dans les documents officiels de la République d’Irlande (1992–1995)’, in Godeleine Logez-Carpentier (ed.), L’Irlande: imaginaire et représentation (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1997), pp. 249–64, at p. 251. 10 Bonel-Elliott, ‘La Représentation du système éducatif ’, pp. 253–4. 11 From a ‘legislation summary’ on education and training on the official EU website:  ‘Education, training and youth play an essential role in a knowledge-based economy as they support growth and employment by encouraging the emergence of a highly qualified and adaptable population. They also strengthen social cohesion and active citizenship within the European Union’, available at www. europa.eu/legislation_summaries/education_training_youth/index_en.htm (accessed 26 March 2014). The European Commission website insists on ‘investment in human capital’ (www.ec.europa.eu/education/focus/focus479_en.htm [accessed 3 January 2010]) and sees the EU’s role in education as being first and foremost about ‘growth and jobs’ and ‘aligning skills with labour market needs’, ‘modernisation’ being the operative word (www.ec.europa.eu/education/policy/ strategic-framework/growth-jobs_en.htm [accessed 26 March 2014]). 12 Department of Education, The Green Paper:  Education for a Changing World (April 1992), p. 3. 13 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 113. 14 Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922–1985, p. 334. 15 Lee, Ireland, pp. 640–1. 16 Bonel-Elliott, ‘La Représentation du système éducatif ’, p.  250; Brian Elliott and David McLennan, ‘Education, Modernity and Neo-Conservative School Reform in Canada, Britain and the US’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15:2 (1994), 165–85. 17 Education Commission of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors, Considered Response to the Green Paper on Education (Dublin:  Conference of Major Religious Superiors, 1993). 18 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, pp. 9–10. 19 Education Commission of the CMRS, Response to the Green Paper, p. 12. 20 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, p. 11. 21 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, p. 11. 22 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 353–4. 23 Thornley, ‘Ireland: The End of an Era?’, p. 16. 24 Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922–1985, p. 250. 25 F. S.  L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London:  Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), p. 652. 26 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teachers’ Handbook, Part 1, p. 12. 27 Department of Education, All Our Children (1969), p. 2 (my italics). 28 Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922–1985, pp. 333–4. 29 Department of Education, White Paper on Educational Development (1980), p. iii. 30 Department of Education, The Green Paper:  Education for a Changing World, pp.  3 and 34. 31 Department of Education, Charting our Education Future: White Paper on Education (1995). 32 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 35.

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33 Among the reactions from historians, Nicholas Canny, ‘History and the Junior Cert’ (letter), History Ireland, 4:2 (1996), 10–11, at p. 10. 34 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 10. 35 John Coolahan (ed.), Report on the National Education Convention (Dublin:  The National Education Convention Secretariat, 1994), p. 75. 36 Department of Education and Science, Annual Report 2000 (published in 2001), p. 7. 37 Department of Education and Science, Annual Report 2003 (published in 2004), p. 2. 38 Department of Education and Science, Annual Report 2002 (published in 2003), p. 5. 39 Also Patrick Clancy, ‘Education in the Republic of Ireland: The Project of Modernity?’, in Clancy et  al. (eds), Irish Society:  Sociological Perspectives (Dublin:  Institute of Public Administration), pp. 473–9. 40 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 6. 41 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 8. 42 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 6. 43 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 6. 44 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 10. 45 Department of Education, The Green Paper: Education for a Changing World, p. 87. 46 Adult Education Commission, Lifelong Learning: Report (1984), p. 24. 47 Michel Foucault, L’Archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969). 48 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Catholic Primary Schools: A Policy for Provision into the Future (Dublin: Veritas, 2007). 49 Imelda Bonel-Elliott, ‘La Représentation du système éducatif ’, pp. 252–3. 50 Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, p. 229. 51 Government of the Republic of Ireland, The National Children’s Strategy: Our Children, Their Lives (2000); Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, p. 231. 52 Government of the Republic of Ireland, The National Children’s Strategy, p. 4, quoted in Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, p. 233. 53 Nicholas Lee, Childhood and Society:  Growing Up in an Age of Uncertainty (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2001), p. 91, quoted in Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, p. 233. 54 Bryan Fanning, Angela Veale and Dawn O’Connor, Beyond the Pale: Asylum-Seeking Children and Social Exclusion in Ireland (Dublin:  Irish Refugee Council  – Combat Poverty Agency, 2001); Paul Cullen, Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), p. 21. 55 Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, pp. 235–7. 56 Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, p. 241. 57 Department of Education and Science, Guidelines on Traveller Education in Primary Schools (2002) (Inspectorate Publications); Guidelines on Traveller Education in Second-Level Schools (2002). 58 Department of Education and Science, Annual Report 2006 (December 2007). 59 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum:  Introduction (1999), p. 28. 60 Department of Education and Science, Annual Report 2005 (2006), p. 17. 61 Department of Education and Science, Annual Report 2005. 62 Karin Fischer, ‘Vers une politique éducative globale et cohérente d’inclusion des minorités en République d’Irlande?’, in Françoise Canon-Roger (ed.), Irlande: inclusion-exclusion (Reims:  Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2003), pp. 157–69.

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63 Enda McGorman, Head of Mary Mother of Hope National School in Clonee, Dublin 15, interviewed in the radio programme ‘Teaching English to Non-Irish Nationals’, in Today with Pat Kenny (Myles Dungan), RTÉ Radio 1 (4 August 2009). 64 INTO, The Challenge of Diversity:  Education Support for Ethnic Minority Children (Dublin: INTO, 1998), p. 41. 65 INTO, The Challenge of Diversity, p. 30. 66 Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education, Education for a Pluralist Society: The Direction of Intercultural Education (Dublin: Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education, 2001). 67 INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School:  Proceedings of the Joint Conference of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation and the Equality Authority, Limerick, 27 March 2004 (Dublin: INTO and the Equality Authority, 2004). 68 Clondalkin Travellers’ Development Group, Report on Cultural Diversity, Clondalkin, May 2000. 69 Enda McGorman and Ciaran Sugrue, Intercultural Education: Primary Challenges in Dublin 15 – A Report Funded by the Social Inclusion Unit of the Department of Education and Science (Dublin: Department of Education and Science, 2007). 70 From Brian Lenihan’s speech at the Conference on ‘Cultural Diversity in Schools’, 19 October 2007, Blanchardstown Technology Institute. 71 McGorman and Sugrue, Intercultural Education, pp. 142–3. 72 McGorman and Sugrue, Intercultural Education, pp.  142–3, quoting Garret FitzGerald, ‘New Catholic School Policy Could Produce Unintended “Apartheid” ’, Irish Times (8 September 2007). 73 Raymond Weber, former Head of Education, Culture and Sport at the Council of Europe, reflected on the development of the Council of Europe orientations in this field in a 1995 article: Raymond Weber, ‘De la réalité multiculturelle à la démarche interculturelle: quels défis pour le Conseil de l’Europe?’, in Jean-Pierre Saez (ed.), Identités, cultures et territoires (Paris:  Desclée de Brouwer, 1995), pp. 79–92. 74 Geneviève Vinsonneau, ‘Carmel Camilleri, une contribution essentielle à la confluence des cultures’, Cahiers de Sociologie Économique et Culturelle, 28 (1997), pp. 109–10; Carmel Camilleri and Margalit Cohen-Emerique (eds), Chocs de cultures:  concepts et enjeux pratiques de l’interculturel (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 1989); Carmel Camilleri, ‘From Multicultural to Intercultural: How to Move from One to the Other’, in James Lynch, Celia Modgil and Sohan Modgil (eds), Cultural Diversity and the Schools, 4 vols. (London: Falmer, 1992), vol. I, pp. 141–51. 75 John O’Connell, quoted by Yvonne Healy, ‘Make It Multi-cultural’, Irish Times (15 October 1996). 76 Department of Education, Charting Our Education Future, p. 204. 77 INTO, The Challenge of Diversity, pp. v–vi. 78 Coolahan, Report on the National Education Convention, p. 68. 79 From interviews carried out with National Committee for Development Education officials in the early 2000s. 80 Department of Education and Science, White Paper on Adult Education: Learning for Life (July 2000), p. 13. 81 Department of Education and Science, Guidelines on Traveller Education in Primary Schools, p.  34 ff., p.  45; Guidelines on Traveller Education in Second-Level Schools, pp. 20–5.

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82 Department of Education and Science, Information Booklet for Schools on AsylumSeekers, p. 9. 83 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism and Interculturalism in Education: Draft Recommendations towards a National Action Plan (2002). 84 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 3. 85 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 2. 86 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, pp. 5–6. 87 Similar views in Department of Education and Science, White Paper in Adult Education (2000), p. 13. 88 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 2. 89 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 4. 90 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 12. 91 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 16. 92 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism. 93 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism. 94 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism. 95 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 17. 96 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 27. 97 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 19. 98 See also Martine Abdallah-Pretceille, L’Éducation interculturelle (Paris: PUF, 1999). 99 Department of Education and Science, Promoting Anti-racism, p. 22. 100 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School: Guidelines for Schools (Dublin: NCCA and Department of Education and Science, 2005); NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Post-Primary School (Dublin: NCCA and Department of Education and Science, 2006). 101 Williams, Faith and the Nation, pp. 14–15.

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This chapter will examine how general policy orientations were translated into school curricula in the late 1990s and 2000s with regard to cultural and religious matters. Can these curricula be said to demonstrate a pluralist transition, or even revolution, as compared with the still strongly Christian educational message of the 1970s? We will consider the school curricula as statements of intent on the part of Irish public institutions. As Fionnuala Waldron remarked in her analysis of Irish identity and citizenship in the 1999 primary-school curriculum, all school subjects may be studied for such a purpose, but some of them have a closer or more explicit link to issues of identity and citizenship.1 We will look more specifically at the way religion is handled within the context of these issues. In the Irish State, such links may be found more particularly in school history, Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) in primary schools, Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) in secondary schools, as well as RE or ‘Religion’, as it is often called in the school context. The new cross-curricular approach of intercultural education may now be added to the list. While analysing school curricula may help reveal the ideological underpinnings of the educational project, it is really at the interface between theory and practice that one may identify fault lines or contradictions and thus evaluate the project’s overall integrity.2 Examining the structural characteristics of the Irish school system in the following chapters will help shed light on the framework within which these educational contents are expected to be taught and thus highlight the systemic and ideological constraints on the implementation of certain aspects of the curricula. In the case of the school curricula introduced since the end of the 1980s, major contradictions may be pointed out without even going beyond the curriculum itself. New contents and approaches in history and education for citizenship are marked by a pluralist ambition – and even an egalitarian one in the case of CSPE – and have been ostensibly underpinned by the principles of intercultural education since the mid 2000s. By contrast, RE syllabuses have largely remained a vehicle of a Christian catechism, albeit modernised, in

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the vast majority of schools, despite efforts towards a more open approach at secondary level. Such tensions in terms of contents are reinforced by significant divergences of approach. Indeed, the pedagogical project of intercultural education, which emphasises the ability to question and to think critically, clashes directly with religious instruction as it remains taught in primary schools. These tensions are all the more problematic at primary level as there is a systematic stress on an integrated approach of teaching contents. As we will see, these tensions reveal a wider ambivalence in the definition of the educational project as far as the place of religion in the construction of Irish identity is concerned, an ambivalence that was perceptible even in the introduction to the primary-school curriculum of 1999. The overall message of the 1999 primary-school curriculum: between a new respect for diversity and a more traditional vision of Irish identity A new primary-school curriculum was gradually introduced in schools in the first half of the 2000s. This was the first revision of Irish primary-school curricula for almost thirty years, the previous curriculum dating back to 1971. This revised curriculum was the result of the work carried out by committees within the NCCA, which had been created in 1987. Each committee was in charge of one subject, and a coordination committee put together the various contributions. This mode of elaboration may partly account not only for differences between subjects but also between subjects and the broad lines put forward in the general introduction. While the 1971 curriculum had been written by a small group of primary-school inspectors, the NCCA committees gathered representatives from the main interest groups in Irish education (teaching organisations, school patrons, department inspectors, parents’ councils) in a spirit of ‘partnership’, with all that this may imply both in terms of a relative democratisation of the process and in terms of perpetuation of the power relations within the system, participants always being present in the name of their organisation or institution.3 In this respect it should be noted that in Ireland department or ministry representatives may also be members of religious orders. The ‘Minister’s nominee’ in the NCCA was Sister Betty Foley, and one out of two NCCA vice-presidents also belonged to a religious order (Sister Pat Murray until 1998, Sister Bríd Rowe from 1998).4 In his study of the structural development processes of the new curricula and their implications, Gary Granville remarked that pupils or students were conspicuous by their absence.5 He presented the emergence of the NCCA as an example among others ‘in the international experience of educational politics’ of ‘ostensible devolution, with an underpinning element of increased central control’.6 The increased involvement of teachers did mark a significant change, however, compared with previous practice.

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The 1971 curriculum had been an important milestone in the recognition of the historical contribution of different Irish traditions to the development and identity of Ireland.7 Generally speaking, the 1999 curriculum marked a further, significant step towards a wider acceptance of cultural pluralism within Irish society. It explicitly asserted that one of the aims of education was to promote an attitude of tolerance and respect towards cultural, religious and social diversity both within the Republic of Ireland and from an international perspective.8 As expressed in the general introduction, however, this statement of intent remained largely founded on an abstract, static recognition of the multicultural character of Irish society and not on the dynamic, critical and constructive vision necessary to a true intercultural approach. The authors recognise the existence of ‘minorities’ within Irish society but reassert some of the traditional characteristics of the Irish ‘majority’ identity, in particular its historical link with Christianity. In the section of the introduction entitled ‘Pluralism’, they explain: The curriculum has a particular responsibility in promoting tolerance and respect for diversity in both the school and the community. Children come from a diversity of cultural, religious, social, environmental and ethnic backgrounds, and these engender their own beliefs, values and aspirations. The curriculum acknowledges the centrality of the Christian heritage and tradition in the Irish experience and the Christian identity shared by the majority of Irish people. It equally recognises the diversity of beliefs, values and aspirations of all religious and cultural groups in society.9

The authors of this introduction thus chose to reaffirm the privileged position of the Christian tradition and identity in Irish society and justify this continuing special position on the grounds of its historical character as well as of its majority status. In other words, ‘ “we” were here before and “we” are more numerous than “you”, it is thus normal and legitimate for all pupils of this State’s schools to follow a curriculum affording a special position to “our” religion and not to “yours” ’. In such a vision, the Christian tradition still appears to lie at the heart of Irish identity, while minority groups are merely to be respected as such. The last sentence in the quotation contradicts what comes before it; for the authors, the Christian tradition appears to be more equal than the others, as it were. Hence a weak, ambiguous conception of pluralism, which is also to be found in the defence of the denominational structure of the school system, as we will see. The detailed syllabuses for History, Geography and SPHE (a new subject with some elements akin to a form of civic education at primary level) (see Fionnuala Waldron’s analysis) tend to escape the conservative tenor of the general introduction by basing their contents on its pluralist declarations.10 As a result, RE as a school subject finds itself at odds with these other aspects of the overall curriculum from both an ideological and a pedagogical viewpoint. We will explore this tension in coming sections. In the preamble to the 1999 curriculum’s general introduction, Minister for Education Micheál Martin pointed out that the development and

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implementation of RE syllabuses in primary schools remained entirely in the hands of religious authorities.11 The religious dimension was still present in the general guidelines in the introduction, however, through a repeated emphasis on the ‘spiritual and moral’ dimensions of every child’s development as coming before all other aspects: ‘[The Primary-School Curriculum] is designed to nurture the child in all dimensions of his or her life – spiritual, moral, cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, social and physical’.12 The ‘spiritual dimension of life’ was also included among the key concepts of primary schooling that were presented by the authors as having been agreed on in the debates leading to the 1995 White Paper and then the 1998 Education Act, along with ‘the development of a sense of Irish identity’. While the religious character of the notion of spirituality may be the topic of a theoretical debate, the explanation given for this key concept in the introductory document tends to confirm such an interpretation in the Irish context, even if the affective and aesthetic realms are also mentioned. This spiritual dimension is indeed defined as a ‘search for truth and the quest for an element of transcendence in the human experience’. The idea of a ‘conviction’ shared by a majority in Ireland (implicitly legitimising the inclusion of this spiritual dimension in the curriculum) is taken up in the same passage: For most people in Ireland, the totality of the human condition cannot be understood or explained merely in terms of physical or social experience. This conviction comes from a shared perception that intimates a more profound explanation of being, from an awareness of the finiteness of life and from the sublime fulfilment that human existence sometimes affords.13

While this tentative definition of the spiritual dimension of life goes beyond the strictly religious, the choice of wording clearly evokes it. From this perspective it appears that the inclusion of religious education in the following paragraph is considered particularly important, if not crucial, for the development of this spiritual dimension in children. Faith in God is no longer explicitly presented as the most noble ambition of primary schooling (as it was in the 1971 curriculum), and, as we have seen, the ‘Christian identity of a majority of Irish people’ is only brought up in the section entitled ‘Pluralism’. But the special place given to this ‘spiritual dimension’ (after the ‘sense of Irish identity’ and the ‘Irish language’ and before the ‘European and global dimensions’ of children’s civic awareness) tends to further reinforce the impression that connections are established between the idea of developing one’s spiritual sense, religious (and mainly Christian) faith and Irish identity.14 The place given to this spiritual dimension echoes a particular aspect of the Irish discourse of cultural nationalism in the early twentieth century: its celebration of spirituality as a distinctive feature of the Gaelic-Catholic Irish people rooted in its history both pre-Christian (with the revival of the Celtic heritage and Celtic ‘soul’) and Christian – in opposition to an English people perceived as essentially materialistic in the pejorative sense of the term. Such an interpretation finds a measure of support in wider studies of the contemporary Irish

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discourse on spirituality. Catherine Maignant showed not only that a form of ‘spiritual renewal’ tinged with Celtic or neo-Christian mysticism ran parallel to the decline of religious practice and to the relative rejection of traditional conceptions of organised religion in the Republic of Ireland but also that such a trend had a nationalist dimension in the sense that this contemporary spirituality was seen as a distinctive trait of the Irish people, or in some cases of a Celtic community beyond national borders.15 According to Maignant, who also underlines the vague and changeable character of the concept, ‘in all its interpretations, Irish spirituality assumes that Irish people have a special faculty of achieving an intimate experience of the divine, through their perceived traditional ability to feel its presence in all things’.16 It is all the more tempting to draw a parallel between this wider contemporary context and the treatment of the ‘spiritual dimension’ as a key concept in the 1999 primary-school curriculum. The general presentation of religious education in the 1999 curriculum emphatically states that ‘its [the spiritual dimension’s] religious and cultural expression is an inextricable part of Irish culture and history’.17 The State’s promotion of religious identity in primary school Religion is also, and more obviously, present among the ‘Specific Aims and General Objectives’ of the curriculum (beyond RE per se). According to the authors of the introductory document, primary education should ‘enable children to develop spiritual, moral and religious values’.18 This is the first allusion to the idea that primary schools are expected to play an active role in religious proselytising (even if there is no mention of a particular religion), a role which appears identified as such and supported by the State. The adjective ‘religious’ was here simply added to the other two (‘spiritual’ and ‘moral’) that had appeared in tandem throughout the document up to then. In line with this outlook, the section outlining ‘general objectives’ concludes: In engaging with the curriculum, the child should be enabled to […] •  acquire sensitivity to the spiritual dimension of life; •  develop the capacity to make ethical judgements informed by the tradition and ethos of the school; •  develop a knowledge and understanding of his or her own religious traditions and beliefs, with respect for the religious traditions and beliefs of others.19

That all primary-school children have religious traditions and beliefs  – and that these are in line with the ethos of their school – is taken for granted by the authors. In the second point, they circumscribe children’s capacity to make ethical judgements within the framework of the (generally) religious character or tradition of the school, which contradicts the pledge to respect ‘the religious traditions and beliefs of others’. Overall, in this introductory document, the Irish State explicitly asserts that ‘national’ education should play a role in promoting religion and a particular

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religious identification in the minds of children. In its general guidelines, the 1999 primary-school curriculum appears to be based on a series of founding tenets or assumptions that seek to restrict at the outset the range of possibilities in the development of children’s personal identities as far as religious belief is concerned. RE curricula for primary schools were to remain the prerogative of the religious authorities, along with control over their implementation, as was recognised as their right by the Department of Education and Science in line with the 1998 Education Act.20 So the NCCA did not produce any specific booklet on religious education, but a short section was nevertheless devoted to RE alongside the other subjects of study in the same introductory document. Elements mentioned above such as the notion of ‘the child’s affective, aesthetic, spiritual, moral and religious needs’ or ‘the spiritual dimension as a fundamental aspect of individual experience’ were included in this general presentation, as were the restrictive assumptions regarding belief: Religious education specifically enables the child to develop spiritual and moral values and come to a knowledge of God. Irish society recognises the right of the individual to choose the particular form of religious expression that reflects the spiritual aspirations and experience he or she seeks. It acknowledges, too, the importance of tolerance towards the practice, culture and life-style of a range of religious convictions and expressions, and aspires to develop in children a tolerance and understanding towards the beliefs of others.21

The authors clearly aim to suggest that a spirit of openness and tolerance is characteristic of Irish society, in contrast with the strictly Christian character of the religious message of the 1971 primary curriculum. But such declarations presuppose both the existence of God and the idea that a religious dimension is a necessary component of individual identity. Ironically, the sentence conveying this message also contains one of the document’s rare references to individual right and individual choice. One might consider such statements of intent as reflecting the wishes of parents with various religious affiliations, although the mention of ‘God’ seems to refer specifically to the Christian God (no place here for polytheistic religions). Such an explicit promotion of religion by public authorities is clearly in breach of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (whether of the child or of any adult within the school environment). The proposed development of a new course in Education about Religions and Beliefs (ERB) and Ethics, still in its early stages in 2016 (with a national consultation under way), would seem to herald a departure from the general outlook of the 1999 curriculum.22 However, it is difficult to see how the State will be able to reconcile a more neutral approach to religion in this course with the still valid frameworks of the 1999 curriculum and of the 1998 Education Act giving official recognition and priority to the school patrons’ ethos.

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Towards interculturalism in all school subjects – except religion In the course of the years 2000, the development of an educational discourse promoting a cross-curricular intercultural approach lent renewed meaning and substance to existing strands of the school curriculum that were meant to uphold ‘pluralism’ and ‘respect for diversity’, steering them towards a more fluid and dynamic understanding of Irish cultural reality. Although authors of the 2005 and 2006 NCCA brochures on intercultural education insisted that intercultural education did not represent an addition to, much less a departure from, the 1999 primary-school curriculum, since such an approach was already supposed to be an integral part of it, the publication of these detailed guidelines for primary and secondary schools did represent a significant move in this direction.23 The vision of intercultural education put forward in these new documents broadly corresponded to that in the Guidelines on Traveller Education in Primary Schools published in February 2002: An intercultural approach is important within the curriculum in order to help pupils to develop the ability to recognise inequality, injustice, racism, prejudice and bias and to equip them to challenge and try to change these manifestations when they encounter them. Young people should be enabled to appreciate the richness of a diversity of cultures and be supported in practical ways to recognise and to challenge prejudice and discrimination where they exist. […] One of the principal aims of an intercultural approach in school is to help children to recognise that there are different ways of viewing the world and that there is more than one valid perspective.24

The 2005 and 2006 brochures had the same subtitle (the 2006 document reproduced many passages from the 2005 guidelines), which amounted to a tentative definition of the basic aims of intercultural education: ‘Enabling children/students to respect and celebrate diversity, promote equality and challenge unfair discrimination.’ Equal access and equal involvement of children in schools are presented as being part of an inclusive, intercultural approach.25 The development of intercultural education encouraged through these publications has opened up a potentially more dynamic view of cultural reality that might in turn allow children more freedom in defining their own evolving cultural identities, and the authors did take pains to warn against narrow or stereotyped cultural representations. But a number of elements in the guidelines for primary schools still point to a static vision of culture, or cultures, implying that each child comes to school with fixed cultural baggage. They may now open their cultural suitcase and show its contents around, their fellow pupils or teachers may ‘celebrate’ its components, but any cultural exchanges, omissions, rejections, fabrications or appropriations by the children themselves are not part of the intercultural contract as it is set out in the guidelines, in contrast with the dynamic processes identified and put forward by international theorists of intercultural education.

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Such a dynamic approach implies not only recognising and opening oneself to other cultural influences but also reflecting critically upon one’s own cultural assumptions. Generally speaking, placing undue emphasis on the ‘celebration of diversity’ for its own sake also runs the risk of bypassing or rejecting out of hand any kind of critical analysis of cultural realities since the assumption is that cultural traditions may only be accepted and praised. One danger of such an approach would be to overlook or avoid potentially controversial subjects such as the existence of power relations and inequalities within cultures.26 While the authors do attempt to develop strategies questioning cultural assumptions in several instances, they revert to uncritical trends whenever religion is explicitly mentioned. At times, the celebration of cultural diversity or difference seems to take precedence over issues of human rights, respect for equality and life in a democracy, all features that are presented elsewhere in the text as being at the basis of the national political culture.27 Certain religious interdictions are presented as cultural characteristics that should be respected as such, in spite of their potentially discriminatory nature or the fact that they might infringe upon individual freedoms or gender equality, for example, a radical form of cultural relativism here overshadowing respect for human rights.28 Such an uncritical approach to cultural difference appears even in cases where it might affect the background and content of learning for all children involved. The authors contend, for example, that teachers should find out about the religion of each child at enrolment along with related religious practices (implicitly those of their parents) and reflect upon the implications these could or should have on class organisation and course content: ‘for example, whether physical contact between children might be deemed inappropriate in Drama or PE [Physical Education], whether producing representations of the human body or religious symbols may be inappropriate in Visual Arts, or whether pop music might be inappropriate in Music.’29 In the context of such practical advice, general statements of intent and the brief presentation on human rights (and responsibilities) later in the document seem all the more abstract. Human rights, for all their ‘universal’, ‘indivisible’ and ‘inalienable’ character, in those passages seemed added onto the intercultural discourse (here mainly understood as a discourse of cultural difference) rather than ever really placed at the core of educational concerns.30 Despite those significant, unresolved issues, a real effort was made in these guidelines for intercultural education to develop a discourse of inclusiveness and recognition of cultural and religious diversity within Irish society, as is visible in the section entitled ‘Identity and Belonging’ of the 2005 brochure.31 The authors took pains to emphasise the reality of Irish cultural diversity, whether from a historical or contemporary perspective, in a clear departure from the discourse of cultural homogeneity that dominated educational contents up to the 1970s. In the 2006 guidelines for post-primary schools, they explicitly put into question the notion of a homogenous ethnic majority in Ireland, pointing to the diversity of habits of life, values and convictions depending on

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age, geographical situation or social class within that so-called majority, and concluding: This suggests that, even without looking at minority ethnic groups, the generalisation that is called Irish culture hides a great diversity of ways of life. Diversity in food, music, lifestyle, religious beliefs, language, values, ethnicity and, increasingly, in skin colour, are a core part of Irish life. They each play a role in contributing to the rich mix that is Irishness. In this respect, Ireland today mirrors Ireland at various times in her past. Ireland has been forged from diversity, from successive waves of immigration including Celtic, Viking, Norman, English, Scots and Huguenot, something which can be seen in the diversity of origins of names which are typical in Ireland. The Irish Nobel Prize winning playwright George Bernard Shaw expressed this when he wrote, ‘I am a genuine typical Irishman of the Danish, Norman, Cromwellian and (of course) Scotch invasions.’32

This new educational outlook was also meant to be cross-curricular and hence be applied to the whole primary-school curriculum, in line with the integrated principle that was meant to provide coherence to the whole learning experience. The authors insisted that children would be more likely to adopt corresponding attitudes and values if intercultural education were truly at the heart of all dimensions of school life.33 They warned against the dangers of ‘institutional racism’, but without giving any particular example of how it might take shape in schools: When a school prioritises the culture of one ethnic group to the detriment of others it may be guilty of institutional racism. Those in the school community who are responsible for policies, practices, and the cultivation of the school ethos should always be vigilant in ensuring that the culture, beliefs and way of life of all the children in the school are respected.34

Here again the wording, while overtly advocating an open, tolerant view of cultural diversity, also seemed to point to a static view of culture and cultural groupings rather than adhering to a more dynamic intercultural outlook. Addressing all schools, the authors came up with an abstract checklist, without defining what such an approach might mean in reality. In light of the denominational character of the vast majority of Irish schools, one might have expected them to attempt to make more specific proposals addressing that particular, potentially problematic aspect and how it might be dealt with, if only by referring to the principle of equality of access and participation for all children. The proposed intercultural approach did not apply to religious education in schools, despite the integrated principle and the fact that the same teacher was supposed to teach both the general curriculum and RE in primary schools. This was made clear in the guidelines for primary schools, which took up the passages on RE from the 1999 curriculum almost word for word and indicated that since the State had no responsibility in this field, religious curricula simply did not require examination within the scope of the brochure. One sentence was added, however, on the possibility of promoting tolerance and

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understanding between religions, as well as towards ‘those with no expressed religious belief system’ (a population that had been, as we saw, entirely ignored in the curriculum introduction), in RE classes.35 This deliberate oversight and obvious flaw in the implementation of guidelines for intercultural education was remarked upon by the Alliance for Children’s Rights (a grouping of ninety Irish non-governmental organisations) in 2006:  ‘A major weakness of the guidelines [for primary schools] is that they do not cover the religious education curriculum as this is the preserve of the religious bodies that manage the schools and is not regulated by the State.’36 The 2006 guidelines for post-primary schools did propose possible avenues in the field of religious education, as it was now within the remit of the NCCA at that level, and had been since the end of the 1990s, with the significant caveat that representatives of the main Irish Christian Churches (Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, Methodist and Presbyterian), were added to the usual NCCA committee members for that particular subject.37 The authors declare that both the contents and aims of the RE syllabus at post-primary level are compatible with the contents and values of intercultural education.38 The few quotations used to support this assertion point to a more open attitude towards religious diversity, contrasting both with former religion syllabuses set up by the religious authorities for post-primary schools and with religious instruction as it still exists in primary schools. At the same time, a study of the full RE syllabus shows that these quotations were chosen selectively by the authors. This syllabus does not lend itself as well as the authors suggest to a true intercultural approach, if only because of the obvious special emphasis on Christianity (more on the RE syllabus below). Apart from these reservations,39 there is also the question of whether these new principles have been implemented, with no wide-ranging survey on this as yet. In 2006, the INTO praised the publication of the 2005 guidelines for primary schools and supported their general outlook but noted that the necessary in-service training had not been put in place on a national scale. The organisation also observed that, apart from schools being sent this long document, no specific help had been provided to facilitate implementation. In addition, the often very practical questions raised by teachers in their efforts to adopt such an intercultural approach had received no response from the government.40 The INTO thus asked for systematic initial training as well as in-service training for intercultural education. Beyond the desirability of teacher-training, the potential clash between the principles of intercultural education and the reality of the denominational school system may partly explain the reluctance of the NCCA and Department of Education to provide specific answers to issues raised by teachers and heads, especially at primary level. One of the missions of denominational primary schools remains the transmission of faith. The owners of these schools, especially within the Catholic Church, have repeatedly claimed that their religious ethos must imbue all aspects of school life so that religious education seems bound to go beyond the limits of the daily half hour that schools are legally expected to devote to it.

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Conversely, the principles of intercultural education are not welcomed in the area of religious education, even though they, too, are meant to inform the whole learning process of children. Tensions are bound to arise between two educational approaches that are both meant to be holistic and whose founding principles are at odds. A more inclusive school history School history and citizenship education are both representative of efforts to open up and renew the national educational project: the significant changes introduced in these two subjects allow for a natural integration of the intercultural approach. The aim in this section is to give an overview of these changes (drawing mainly from existing research) and thus highlight how they contrast with religious teachings in Irish National Schools in terms of underlying conceptions of cultural development and identity. We will first focus on the history curriculum since school history may be said to have opened the way for identity pluralism in Irish schools. From the late 1960s, while civic education was still moribund or all but non-existent, school history gradually dissociated itself from the identification with ‘the Catholic Irish people’ it had conveyed until then, as studies of history curricula and textbooks have shown.41 The 1971 curriculum was still Christian in outlook, but this already marked a significant change compared with previous preconceptions of Irish identity. With the crisis in Northern Ireland influencing matters in the south, an effort was made in the history curriculum to ensure that ‘the contribution of all creeds and classes to the evolution of modern Ireland’ was recognised, with a view to including all Christian traditions in a new vision of Irish national identity.42 This was then an illustration of the ‘old pluralist agenda’ as described by Andrew Finlay, although a more precise analysis of the 1971 curriculum shows that there was a lingering tendency to equate the ‘Irish people’ with the Catholic people, as legitimated by a majority perspective.43 More recent studies by Fionnuala Waldron and Roland Tormey on the relationship between national identity and primary-school history in the Republic of Ireland confirm a gradual move towards a ‘new pluralist agenda’ in the 1999 curriculum.44 The curriculum distanced itself from the celebration of a single or dominant historical discourse, with teachers being asked to encourage a more critical and varied approach to history. An assertion and celebration of ‘diversity’ as being at the heart of Irish identity now seemed to replace the old Catholic nationalist discourse. Tormey has gone so far as to describe the changes from 1971 to 1999 as a move from a ‘post-colonial’ curriculum to a ‘globalised’ one.45 Borrowing Anthony Giddens’ phrase, Tormey even expresses worry over the ‘existential angst’ that the absence of predefined identity markers (or borders) might lead to, overlooking perhaps a little too quickly the strength of such identity markers within the social environment of children outside class.46 While an attempt is indeed made to place the child at the

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centre of a complex identity network that stretches from the local to the global, the overall perspective is perhaps not quite so devoid of borders as Tormey asserts, but a more detailed analysis would be outside the scope of the present work. Alongside the celebration of diversity, Waldron also notes a tendency to play down class (as well as gender) inequalities and conflicts in particular, by contrast with the Social and Personal Education curriculum. Such reservations notwithstanding, both the more nuanced and inclusive approach of identity and the aim of cultivating critical and independent thought in children marked a clear ideological break from the assumption and celebration of a common cultural and religious background that prevailed in the 1970s.47 Tormey suggests that the 1999 curriculum illustrates ‘a move towards legitimising more open forms of globalised civic belonging (something Durkheim was promoting a century ago)’, with an ‘Irishness that seeks to imagine an “us” without a “them”, an Irishness that can shift depending on one’s perspective and that is enmeshed in a European and a global heritage’.48 A study of the contents of primary- and secondary-school textbooks from the 1990s and 2000s confirms that they have abandoned the Gaelic and Catholic myth of Irish identity, striving to convey a vision of Irish history which would be that of the inhabitants of Ireland, and for the contemporary period, of both parts of the island (at least to a point).49 While a purely Catholic identification is a thing of the past, one may still find in some of the textbooks comments or turns of phrase implying a Christian background common to both the authors and the pupils they address. Fionnuala Waldron quotes from a 1996 history textbook titled Ages Ago, where, in a section on Romans and their belief system, the authors explain that ‘The City of Rome existed long before the birth of Jesus, so early Romans did not know about the one true God.’50 A common religious perspective is clearly assumed here, with the Roman polytheistic culture excused, as it were, on the grounds that Jesus Christ had not been born yet. Waldron also quotes from another textbook (Footprints, 1985; published earlier but still used in some schools in the early 2000s) in which similar assumptions can be found.51 According to her, however, these examples are a mere residual echo of the cultural certainties that were still prevalent in mid-twentieth-century textbooks.52 Equality and pluralism at the heart of CSPE As we saw, in the 1971 curriculum civic education was considered as complementary to religious instruction or even sometimes as stemming from it,53 but it was widely neglected in practice,54 perhaps partly because of this very conception, religious schools typically considering that a religious ethos and religious education were enough to nurture ‘good’ citizens. Since the mid 1990s it has undergone a radical overhaul and has been rehabilitated, at least in theory, mostly within the SPHE syllabus in primary schools and the CSPE syllabus in post-primary schools (with CSPE a compulsory subject for the Junior Certificate). One of the most striking characteristics of the new education for

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citizenship is the extent to which it has emancipated itself from the Christian religious outlook. The following remarks stem from both a study of the curriculum and the works of educationalists and researchers on the topic.55 As in school history, both SPHE and CSPE present Ireland as a diverse, multicultural society and explicitly encourage pupils to reflect on the notion of Irish identity.56 In some ways, however, they go further than the history syllabus: the approach adopted is not only pluralist but also egalitarian, founded on respect for individual rights and responsibilities in a democracy. Until the mid 1990s, human-rights education was not taught in any systematic way in Ireland, as had been noted in the first report of the European Committee against Racism and Intolerance (a Council of Europe initiative) on the Irish State in 1997.57 The authors of the new curricula made it the basis of education for citizenship in the Republic. When mention is made of ‘moral’ aspects or ‘values’, the framework of interpretation is now explicitly that of respect for human rights. CSPE course aims include ‘enabl[ing] pupils to develop their critical and moral faculties in agreement with a system of values based in human rights and social responsibilities’.58 In her analysis of the SPHE syllabus, Fionnuala Waldron stresses that, while children’s belonging to a multiplicity of groups or communities is put forward, such communities are not presented as homogenous groupings, and the emphasis on collective identities is counterbalanced by a recognition of diversity at all levels of human society.59 Authors have taken pains to avoid the danger of a sanitised ‘celebration of diversity’ by adopting an outlook founded on notions of justice and equality, with children being explicitly encouraged to explore unequal relations and structures both within school and in local, national and international contexts.60 The CSPE syllabus takes up and furthers this general perspective at secondary level. Such curricula naturally lend themselves to an implementation of the principles of intercultural education. By putting human rights centre-stage, they go beyond intercultural education as it is understood in the 2005 and 2006 NCCA Guidelines. Internationally, in his work on pluralism in education, Fernand Ouellet insists on the necessity for citizenship education and intercultural education to complement each other, in line with Council of Europe-led research on the topic.61 While one might have some reservations on these new curricula (Waldron notes, for example, that in the SPHE syllabus for primary schools the notion of participatory, active citizenship is little developed), they still provide an ambitious, innovative framework for citizenship education that denotes a true attachment to the ideals of republican citizenship.62 In her analysis of the SPHE syllabus for primary schools, Waldron draws a parallel with the conception of political education advocated by Eamonn Callan.63 Callan argues that the kind of political education needed to maintain and develop a pluralist democratic society includes acquiring the ability to think independently and critically, to adopt a rational approach founded on the evaluation of facts and to question preconceived ideas, values and traditions inherited from the past. As such, education for democratic citizenship seems

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to him to be inherently transformative, both at societal and personal levels. Authors of the Irish citizenship education curricula since the mid 1990s have adopted this general approach, which Waldron describes as a militant one, since, considering the profound inequalities that characterise contemporary Irish society, it is bound to amount to an educational project for the creation of a future society.64 Among the constraints and obstacles such a project would face, Waldron identifies some of the ‘particularistic practices’ that characterise the Irish education system, including social, religious and gender segregation. Drawing on Callan’s work on education for citizenship, she also points out the problematic character of the denominational nature of the system in such a perspective and the ‘tension between comprehensive doctrines that are used as arbiters of fundamental truths and the development and exercise of autonomy, between the rights of traditional communities to recreate themselves and the needs of a pluralist democracy’.65 Religious instruction and integrated teaching in primary schools The place and nature of religious education in the vast majority of Irish primary schools are conducive to it being an element of the reproduction of ‘traditional communities’, to the extent that it has remained at its core a form of religious instruction or catechism, despite the changes in its contents over the past fifty years, and notably since Vatican II.66 According to the still valid 1965 Rules for National Schools, each school must include religious instruction within school hours, and each group wishing to open a new school must submit a corresponding syllabus for the Department of Education’s approval. Schools are under a legal obligation to devote two and a half hours per week to RE from Junior Infants (four- to five-year-olds) onwards, which places the Irish State first among OECD countries in terms of the amount of school time devoted to religious education, far ahead of the other twenty-seven countries in a 2007 survey.67 In all denominational primary schools, religious education syllabuses still differ according to the religious authorities to which each school is affiliated and have remained forms of religious instruction. Religious authorities give their official sanction (imprimatur) to the corresponding textbooks. Until September 2015, the RE syllabus for four- to twelve-year-olds in Catholic schools was called ‘Alive-O’. The Alive-O textbooks were part of a collection titled ‘Children of God’. They were revised editions first published in 1998 (previous editions 1976 and 1983), and copyright belonged to the Irish Bishops’ Commission on Catechesis.68 According to the presentation by the Veritas publishing company, the principal aim of the series was ‘to enable people to become fully alive to the presence of God in themselves, in others, in the church, and in the world around them’,69 following the principles set out by the Vatican’s General Directory for Catechesis (the first General Catechetic Directory was promulgated in 1971 following Vatican II; a revised version was published in 1997).70 The syllabus took up ‘the fundamental tasks of

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catechesis’, namely knowledge of the faith, liturgical education, moral training and the teaching of prayer, presenting the principles of the Catholic faith as revealed truths. The children’s affiliation to the Catholic religion was assumed throughout. A new RE curriculum with official papal approval and a corresponding new programme for religious education called ‘Grow in Love’ (to be developed as a book series by Veritas) were launched by Bishop Brendan Healy, Chair of the Bishops’ Council for Catechetics, in September 2015.71 While according to Father Michael Drumm, Chairperson of the Catholic Schools’ Partnership, these new guidelines now contain ‘a notable emphasis on other religions and worldviews’,72 the overall approach clearly retains a strong catechetical dimension and directly relates religious education to faith formation as an important part of the teacher’s work. The Catholic Preschool and Primary Religious Education Curriculum has four interrelated strands, ‘Christian Faith, Word of God, Liturgy and Prayer, and Christian Morality.’73 Judging by the continued insistence on sacramental preparation and by the fact that schools are still asked to ‘facilitate children who wish to “opt out” of faith formation’,74 this move appears to represent a limited acknowledgement of the existence of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools rather than a significant departure from the basic standpoint of religious instruction, as was also pointed out by the INTO.75 As Protestant schools take in children whose families belong to different Protestant traditions, the religious education course is not specific to any of them but is meant to be of a Christian character and founded on the study of the Bible. While it is sometimes supposed that Irish Protestant schools are more open to religious diversity than Catholic schools both within their RE syllabus and in a general way, there are contradictory testimonies from non-Protestant parents in those schools about their own experience.76 The two existing Muslim primary schools have their own form of religious instruction. The more recently opened one, established in 2001 in a building belonging to the Catholic Church (complete with a statue of the Virgin Mary and a Christian cross on the outside) in a northern district of Dublin, was the subject of a highly negative report by Department of Education inspectors in 2009. The latter pointed not only to serious administrative issues but also to the considerable amount of time devoted to quranic teaching and to prayer (almost an hour per day), to the detriment of other parts of the school curriculum.77 The same inspectors also noted that the school board did not allow the teachers to carry out the national music syllabus, which may be seen as another example of priority being given to the religious affiliation of the school to the detriment of the public education mission that it is supposed to follow as a state-financed primary school. In theory, the conscience clause in the Irish Constitution means that children can be exempted from religion class (although, surprisingly, it has not been applied to teachers). However, there are practical difficulties to such an exemption, and parents often avoid it, as they prefer to give priority to their child’s sense of social inclusion.78 In most cases, the result is that children end

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up staying in class when religious instruction is taking place. In 2004, an INTO representative explained: Every year in September we are contacted by families all over the country who are facing the dilemma of whether they are going to ask for their child to be absented from religious instruction in schools. They are very often indigenous Irish families but they are also increasingly families who are returned emigrants or part of the immigrant community that is developing. The particular pressure that this puts families under is that for the vast majority of parents in this situation they decide not to make it an issue because as parents they’re primarily concerned about the socialisation of their children in schools. As a result of this there is a hidden insidious impression of their rights to their identity taking place.79

The potentially discriminatory character of religious instruction in denominational schools was noted by both the INTO and the Equality Authority when discussing equality issues within the context of the curriculum and primary-school practices at a joint conference on ‘the inclusive school’ in 2004. Participants questioned the situation that children of ‘a religion other than that of the school’ found themselves in when attending religious instruction class and discussed ways of making religion classes ‘as inclusive as possible’.80 They recommended that less time be devoted to ‘teaching denominational religion’ so as to ‘facilitate the accommodation of children who are not of the school’s religion’.81 For its part, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) observed in its first two reports on the Republic of Ireland (in 1996 and 2001) that the denominational character of most schools made it problematic for pupils belonging to minority faiths to be fully included. The authors suggested that an alternative religious education curriculum should be set up: ‘even if those pupils do not have to attend religion class, the ECRI is of the opinion that the possibility of adopting an alternative form of religious education or a form that would include all faiths should be examined’.82 In its 2006 report to the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child, the Irish Alliance for Children’s Rights insisted that alternative solutions be found for children exempted from religion class in denominational schools. It also pressed the Department of Education and Science to envisage the introduction in all schools of an ethical education curriculum that would explore ethical issues as well as different religious and cultural practices.83 In 2004, the INTO tried to propose an religious education syllabus that would be common to all primary schools, as a way to take into account the increasingly diverse school population. It came up against the staunch opposition of Catholic school managers. Dan O’Connor, a priest and General Secretary of the Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association, declared that such a proposal could not meet the obligations of a Catholic school, as such schools had ‘to provide a religious education for the pupils in accordance with the doctrines, practices and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and promote the formation of the pupils in that faith’.84

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Discussions on the specific religious education curriculum also fail to take into account the combined consequences of the denominational character of most schools and of the theoretical integration of all teaching at primary level. This denominational character finds expression in various ways as part of school life, which is the main problem facing parents of faiths other than that of the school.85 The physical environment of these schools is scattered with religious paraphernalia such as crosses, statues or portraits; part of the 1.40 hour per week set aside for school assemblies may be used for religious rituals. The Management Board Members’ Handbook (2000 revised edition), following directives from the Catholic hierarchy, insists that religious values and practices should permeate all aspects of school life.86 Just as it might be difficult for children not to attend the religion class given by their own teacher as part of the school day, so it would seem all but impossible to envisage the same children not taking part in the assemblies that punctuate the life of the school community. In these conditions, it is difficult to see how the constitutional right of children of other faiths than that of the school not to attend religious education in any form could be respected.87 Preparing children for Catholic rites such as first confession, first communion and confirmation is also part of the school year in Catholic schools. Such preparations may even take centre-stage at various times in the relevant classes, and the rituals themselves are an important part of the social and cultural life of the schools, beyond their strictly religious character.88 Many teachers regularly complain about the considerable amount of class time they are expected to devote to these preparations. In the early 2000s, it seemed to some that the Church was ready to envisage a compromise that would take some of the responsibility for these preparations away from the schools and thus lighten the load of teachers: a pilot project titled ‘Do This in Memory’ was set up in several dioceses.89 The preparation for sacraments was to rest more on the parish and on the parents–church–school triangle, thus expecting parents to be more directly involved and giving schools a supporting role rather than the central one.90 Such a development was supported by the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (created in 2000), through declarations made by Sean Cottrell, who headed the network at the time. At the same time, the Catholic Church never meant for ‘its’ schools to be entirely freed from their responsibility in this area. In 2006, Archbishop Sean Brady clearly voiced his opposition to a preparation for sacraments that would take place entirely outside the schools.91 The guidelines for inclusion in Catholic primary schools published by the Catholic Schools Partnership in March 2015 only reiterated this position.92 The fact that religious authorities are still adamant that religious instruction remain part of the school day may also be illustrated by the Dunboyne controversy in 2002. For both practical reasons and on principle, the head of one of the few interdenominational primary schools in the State (i.e. schools under the joint aegis of the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland) had tried to organise for any religious instruction specific to the different groups to take place outside school hours, after class. The idea was to avoid having to

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segregate children during RE class, and particularly during the sacramental preparation for children of Catholic parents. The school managers condemned this decision at once, while the teachers and a large majority of parents (mostly Catholics themselves) supported the school head, Tomas Ó Dúlaing. The latter, who was also supported by the INTO, called the Board of Management’s policy in this area ‘undemocratic’ (his own decision had been taken after a consultation process involving all parents).93 He was eventually sacked by his employers, the An Foras body.94 Conversely, the authors of the general introduction to the 1999 primary-school curriculum insist on its integrated nature, which is also meant to echo ‘the integrated nature of knowledge and thought’, explaining that, ‘for the young child, the distinctions between subjects are not relevant’.95 Such an integrated approach becomes problematic when one considers that religious instruction (as it remains understood in most schools at primary level) is still meant to be a part of the whole, and not a fully separate subject, as its inclusion alongside all other school subjects in the general introduction confirms.96 A  2002 Department of Education report on teacher-training even recommended that ways to further integrate religious education with the other curriculum subjects should be explored when designing courses.97 As Waldron indirectly suggested when discussing the 1971 curriculum, the 1999 curriculum’s emphasis on children’s ability to think critically and to make independent, reasoned choices inevitably comes up against the approach of religious instruction.98 Speaking of the integrated and child-centred ambition of the 1971 curriculum and specifically of the fact that religion was meant to be integrated with ‘secular instruction’, Waldron evoked the danger of confusion between ‘knowledge-as-belief ’ and ‘knowledge-as-construction’:  ‘the nature of religious knowledge is antithetical to the epistemological perspective endorsed by the child-centred model, i.e. that of pragmatic empiricism’.99 Such considerations do not preclude the authors of the ‘Alive-O’ religious instruction syllabus from claiming that it is ‘child-centred’, although one is then bound to question their own understanding of what this particular educational approach entails.100 Other authors, like Kevin Williams (and Joseph Dunne to a lesser extent), have sought to play down this substantive difference as well as the implications of the catechetic or evangelical approach. In Faith and the Nation, Williams makes short work of the ‘danger of indoctrination’ that some seem to worry about, on the basis of what he calls children’s and young people’s ability to resist any form of adult proselytising.101 Joseph Dunne does mention the right of children to freedom of conscience and religion, and the role of the State in making sure children’s rights are respected in public education, but then refuses to consider religious instruction as an issue from this perspective, without developing any reasoned argument:  he chooses instead to simply state his belief that catechesis as such does not lend itself to accusations of indoctrination.102 By contrast, through a series of interviews of teachers, Alison Mawhinney showed that they do consider indoctrination as an inherent aim in

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the integrated curriculum in Irish Catholic primary schools, almost as a matter of course.103 Desmond M. Clarke, another philosopher, departs from Dunne’s statement of belief by taking to its logical conclusion the argument founded on children’s rights, and on the State as the guarantor both of the rights of citizens and of the principle of non-discrimination in public education.104 Whether catechesis may be considered as a form of indoctrination in practice, or even whether it might be considered successful in most cases or not, is in fact largely irrelevant. The problem lies with the basic premise, that is with the existence of God as a revealed truth, and thus presented as a given to the children to start with, whereas, as Clarke points out, the philosophical approach should entail a process of questioning and inquiry, and thus a reflection on this in the first place. He defines ‘indoctrination’ as ‘causally determining the beliefs of another through non-rational procedures’.105 That catechesis might sometimes turn into a debate that brings the reality closer to the philosophical approach as a result of children’s questioning attitude does not by itself change the fact that its very premise does not lend itself to such an approach. At the end of Faith and the Nation, Kevin Williams reasserted the necessity of anchoring religious education in one particular religious denomination, with the aim of fostering the development of faith. He also asserted that such an approach to religious education was in no way problematic in terms of respect for diversity. According to him, it should be enough for teachers to be prepared to hear other voices in the classroom during religion class as well as outside the classroom.106 This openness towards others and what he calls ‘pedagogical tact’ have their limits, however, since he emphasises to teachers that they should in no way tolerate any kind of ‘obstructionism’ from children whose parents might have different convictions, comparing this type of phenomenon with children who might tend to overstate republican views in history class and who would thus disrupt the ‘normal’ course.107 In drawing such a comparison, Williams ignores the fundamental difference between the two types of knowledge mentioned above. The comparison drawn is all the more paradoxical as it confronts two of the main elements of Irish cultural nationalism as it developed around the creation of the Irish Free State, i.e. (Irish-style) republicanism and Catholicism. His concluding sentence is a dubious balancing act since he claims that teachers can both ‘avoid any charge of proselytism’ and also encourage faith.108 The alternative ‘ethical education’ syllabus called ‘Learn Together’ was first introduced in Educate Together schools (which now account for about 2 per cent of all primary schools) in 2004. This syllabus was Educate Together’s answer to the government’s demand for a form of religious instruction within school hours as a legal obligation (in application of the 1965 Rules for National Schools). The parents and teachers who founded the first such schools in the 1970s had at first tried to set up a system that would allow children from various religious backgrounds to have access to specific forms of religious education, but they eventually abandoned the attempt in the face of both practical difficulties and ethical objections. It quickly became apparent that it would be

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all but impossible to afford all children equally forms of religious education that would align with their parents’ convictions, and this within school hours. Such a scheme would also have amounted to segregating the children according to religious affiliation, which was contrary to the very spirit of these new schools.109 Educate Together schools are often defined as ‘multi-denominational’, but this is a misnomer according to their founders and supporters, all the more so as the term ‘denominational’ is usually taken to refer only to Christian traditions. Paul Rowe, a national representative of Educate Together (and its chief executive since 2002), explains that the term ‘multi-denominational’ was imposed on Educate Together schools by the Department of Education, whereas in fact such schools’ approach is not limited to encouraging a form of religious diversity.110 The Learn Together syllabus warrants closer examination than we have space for here. It aims to offer a programme of ethical education, equally inclusive of all children, regardless of religious affiliation (or absence thereof), but it is also largely devoted to a presentation of the various religious systems, and it encourages the celebration of different religious days or festivals in school. The main characteristics of Educate Together schools and some of the implications of this syllabus will be examined in the following chapters. In the new Community National Schools, the government announced that the plan was to have religious instruction within the school day ‘for each of the main religious groups represented’.111 This was an attempt to satisfy the demands of the Catholic Church, by reproducing a form of religious segregation in each school within the framework of religious instruction (against the wishes of Church of Ireland and Methodist representatives).112 School principals, teachers and VEC officials expressed concern over this choice, and the problems posed in terms of practical implementation quickly became obvious, as they had been for the founders of the first Educate Together schools when they had envisaged a similar approach decades earlier. In 2012, drawing on documents she had obtained under Freedom of Information legislation, RTÉ’s Education correspondent Emma O’Kelly revealed that the Department of Education had first asked the NCCA to develop an RE syllabus providing for separate instruction, but that the NCCA had warned against dividing very young children along religious lines as running counter to research on how children settled and built a foundation for success at school. This spurred the Department to turn away from its own curriculum development agency and to commission the Catholic Marino Institute of Education to design the new curriculum, at an estimated initial cost of €127,000.113 A ‘multi-belief programme’ entitled ‘Goodness Me, Goodness You’ was developed, with ‘stories, songs and poems from many belief traditions’, but with provision for distinct activities such as prayer or meditation during the week and for separate instruction ‘for three or four weeks during the year’, with ‘belief classes in the main faith groups (Catholic, Christian, Muslim and Other to date)’.114

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This new model has significant weaknesses, both in terms of equality of treatment for all minority views or beliefs (as the catch-all category ‘Other’ suggests, with children from non-religious backgrounds presumably being put in the same ‘Other’ group as those from the more unusual or smaller minority faith backgrounds within an Irish context), and, even more fundamentally, in terms of respect for the freedom of conscience and religion of each child. The Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board justifies the periodical separation of children according to religious affiliation or ‘faith group’ as corresponding to the remit given to them by the Minister. In the same text, the Board draws a dubious parallel with the fact that children are used to being put into different groups for English, insisting that as a result this separation on the basis of religious affiliation is experienced as ‘a natural movement for them’.115 Despite assurances on Education and Training Board websites that parents and children were happy with this model, confidential documents unearthed by Emma O’Kelly showed that there were significant and ongoing difficulties with implementing it, including dissatisfaction among parents.116 With the exception of the Educate Together network, future primary-school teachers are expected to teach a denominationally oriented religious education course. By contrast, in the UK, from 1994 in Britain and from 1947 in Northern Ireland, the Education Acts allowed teachers a ‘conscience clause’ protecting them from discrimination on religious grounds. In the Irish State, most teachers obtain an RE certificate, delivered by the church-owned teacher-training centres, which is a condition for recruitment in Catholic primary schools.117 Since the vast majority of teachers are likely to be first recruited into one of these schools, they are clearly expected to be capable of teaching a catechetic form of religious education. A 2002 Department of Education report identified the small number of instructors in this field (one per hundred students in the main Catholic teacher-training centres and no full-time instructor in the Church of Ireland centre) as allowing ‘little opportunity for personal interaction as a medium of faith development’, one obvious implication being that the training of would-be teachers in the field of religious education was meant to encourage faith in the first place, according to state representatives themselves.118 The same report did point out that teacher-training centres should take into account the fact that some students might have a religion other than that on which the RE training was founded (or even not have any religion) but without specifying any particular way of doing so and with no comment as to the recruitment issue. There have been limited changes in training colleges with the new option of an ‘ethics and education’ course, for example in St Patrick’s College from 2011.119 The majority of primary-school teachers still agree to consider religious instruction as an integral part of their work, although a 2002 INTO survey found that slightly more than 10 per cent had expressed a wish not to teach religion any more or had even stopped teaching it in a small number of cases (thanks to internal arrangements).120 Already in 1991, an INTO document on the place of religious education in Irish primary schools had found that a number of teachers had issues of conscience

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regarding it.121 The 2002 INTO survey showed that many teachers admitted that they were ill at ease with the obligation put upon them to teach religion. In reflection workshops organised by the INTO, some Educate Together teachers who had previously taught in Catholic schools expressed their feeling of ‘liberation’ at no longer having to teach religious instruction. A 2004 INTO document may be referred to for further information on these debates within the teaching community, as it offers both a detailed overview of the State and practices of religious education in schools and an analysis of teachers’ viewpoints on it.122 A number of the teachers surveyed felt uneasy about the gap between their own religious convictions (in particular when they did not believe in God themselves) and the contents of religious education as they were expected to teach it. The INTO document reproduced a quotation that was thought representative of such a feeling: Nobody believes it any more. The problem is the children question it, the parents have no interest in it and very few of us believe half of what we are teaching. But if you turned around in the morning and said, ‘I’m not teaching religion any more’, there would be holy murder.123

This particular quotation brings to mind another aspect of the issue that Pádraig Hogan of Maynooth University referred to in an article in the same document, namely its cultural dimension. Hogan writes about the prevalence of religious traditions in the Irish cultural heritage transmitted through schools, citing this as the reason why, in his opinion, the idea of an abrupt withdrawal of such traditions from the school context would be seen as a form of ‘cultural obliteration’.124 He does advocate a shift, however, from religious instruction to an exploration of religious traditions (and not only of the main Christian ones) that would be founded on solid educational criteria and not on ‘evangelical assumptions’, a development that would bring such teaching closer to the Educate Together type of ethical education syllabus and that would constitute a revolution in the context of the Irish primary-school system. Religious education at secondary level: Christian but tolerant? Some have described changes in religious education at secondary level since 2000 as representing a momentous step in this direction. New RE syllabuses have been introduced in post-primary schools, and RE is now one of the examination subjects for the Junior Certificate as well as for the Leaving Certificate (general and applied). These syllabuses have been the product of a consultative process: according to the NCCA, a first version was submitted to representatives of the main Christian Churches as well as to the religious leaders of the Muslim and Jewish communities. Other groups, such as the Baha’i community, a Buddhist organisation and the Irish Humanist Society, were consulted as well.125 The promotion of RE to an exam subject seems to be at least partly the result of a compromise reached with the main religious representatives in

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a context where a subject’s status in school depends on its place in the Junior and Leaving Certificate evaluations. To an extent, this new approach may be seen as an attempt to take into account the changes at work in Irish society by adopting a more open outlook. These new curricula mark a departure from the more traditional forms of religious instruction that were prevalent at secondary level. The common Junior Certificate RE syllabus introduced in 2000 offers a study of the main religions in the world, and it also recognises what it calls a non-religious conception, in the form of the humanist philosophy. The inclusion of a non-religious dimension distinguishes the common religion syllabus in the Republic from the Northern Ireland one introduced in the 1990s. By comparison with previous practice, it is understandable that this new syllabus was hailed as an exceptional model of openness and even as a ‘lesson in pluralism’ by Irish journalists such as Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times.126 On the other hand, the order in which various religious groups were consulted suggests a certain hierarchy between them, which is confirmed in the syllabus and in the new textbooks. The main outlook remains Christian and monotheistic, and, as Anne Lodge has noted, non-Christian religions are afforded a much more modest place.127 In this de-facto hierarchy of the main religions deemed worthy of being included in the syllabus, one may also wonder at the place given to non-religious convictions, here represented by the humanist perspective. In the Junior Certificate syllabus, this place seems honourable at first sight, since it is put on a par with the presentation of non-Christian religions, but such a categorisation, which treats the humanist philosophy as a form of belief among others, is questionable in itself. Certain choices of wording also imply a kind of double hierarchy from the outset. Religious education is thus meant to get pupils to ‘appreciate the richness of [other] religious traditions’ but only to ‘acknowledge’ the non-religious interpretation of life.128 The Leaving Certificate also includes a reference to non-religious convictions, but, as Lodge notes, these are part of a section entitled ‘Challenges to Faith’ and are presented on a par with issues raised by ‘the materialism of modern society’ (understood in the current, restrictive sense of the term), with negative connotations attached to them.129 The fact that a number of Irish people with a Christian background seem not to conceive of moral values without religion might partly explain a difficulty to fully accept and respect atheism, or even humanism, as such. In the debates between primary-school teachers transcribed in the 2004 INTO document on religious education, there was also a tendency to describe as ‘inclusive’ an approach that in fact amounted only to a form of Christian ecumenism, ignoring in particular the possibility that some might not believe in ‘God’ (whether they might be affiliated to a religion, for example, or whether they might be without any religion).130 Despite undeniable efforts to offer a syllabus that would be more open to religious perspectives other than Christian, and a more knowledge-centred teaching approach, there appears to be a lingering confusion at post-primary

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level between religious instruction and religious education (i.e. teaching about religions or worldviews in general).131 Some of the debates reproduced in the INTO document revealed a persistent such tendency among primary teachers.132 The secondary-school syllabuses recommend that teachers be attentive to the diverse religious or non-religious convictions of their pupils, but the fact that most of the future RE teachers attend denominational training centres begs the question of how well prepared they might be for such challenges.133 Teacher-training for RE in such places as the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin, for example, has retained a strong denominational, faith development perspective. A study of the textbooks available in the main bookshops confirms that they reflect this lingering confusion and even that the scales still seem to tip towards a form of religious instruction for faith development, despite the new dimension of ‘knowledge about religions’ that is now present.134 Many textbooks are based on Christian assumptions; some have received the official approval (imprimatur) of the Catholic Church. The authors of A Question of Faith explain that ‘by listening to the Church and following sacred scripture we become more informed and therefore can make correct decisions’.135 Here we still find the Christian ‘we’ that had disappeared from history textbooks, whereas in CSPE, when the same pronoun is used, it usually refers either to the community of Irish or European citizens or to the human community. The interpretation to be found in the same textbook on the implications of the decline in church attendance in Ireland also indicates that the authors assume a common Christian, or even Catholic, viewpoint between themselves and their readers: While our Mass attendance numbers have dropped, we still have one of the highest Mass attendance rates in Europe. […] Religion is still very important to people. In fact, in a survey in 1999, 70% of Irish people said they pray once a week. This tells us that even though people may not go to Mass, they have not forgotten about God.136

Certain book titles, such as Faith in Action or Pathways to God, imply a faith-development approach from the outset, whereas others, such as Exploring Faith, seem to announce a more neutral view.137 By contrast, non-religious, atheist or humanist approaches are generally given short shrift in the textbooks (sometimes as little as one page). While some textbooks try to present these approaches in a non-judgemental way, others take sides, as in Know the Way, a 2007 Veritas publication with the official sanction of the Irish Catholic bishops: the book draws a distinction between ‘us’, i.e. the believers (which may sometimes include followers of the three monotheistic religions), and ‘them’, i.e. non-believers, agnostics and ‘secularists’.138 The latter are mentioned in a list that also includes ‘materialism’ (here understood as the accumulation of material wealth) and ‘individualism’, followed up with images of pollution and waste linked to the ‘technological worldview’. Such choices obviously encourage negative associations. The author then explains, for example, that ‘individualism may reduce a person’s ability to feel the presence of God’ and refers to the teachings of Genesis to justify a rejection of the

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so-called ‘technological’ worldview.139 By contrast, the following chapters tend to present moral values as intrinsically linked with religion in general and with Christianity in particular, largely ignoring the very concept of a non-religious moral or ethical system.140 Overall, there is a discrepancy between RE textbooks for secondary schools, which tend to assume the existence of God and a community of faith with their readers (with some nuances), and Junior Certificate examination papers, whose approach implies a more neutral focus on knowledge about religious traditions, albeit with a particular emphasis on Christianity (and knowledge-based questions, with little call for personal thought or analysis).141 Certain formulations in the Veritas advertising catalogue are revealing of the perspective of the Catholic hierarchy and of their belief that the new RE State syllabus may still be used for faith development. In the 2006 catalogue, one of the new textbooks (for the Leaving Certificate) was presented in the following way:  ‘In the spirit of the guidelines published by the Bishops, [the book] explores how teaching the State syllabus for examination can help (in an indirect way) the faith formation of Catholic pupils in second-level schools.’142 Another illustration of the persistent confusion between education about religions and religious instruction is the fact that secondary-school pupils may still be exempted from RE class on the basis of the conscience clause (if their parents wish them to be – they cannot take this decision themselves, at least until their eighteenth birthday). There is also an absence of coherence between the primary- and secondary-school syllabuses in the area of religion, which is especially striking given that department publications insist that there is or should be a logical progression throughout the curriculum: The post-primary curriculum builds on and expands the work carried out in primary schools in relation to the whole area of tolerance and respect, primarily through the Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) programme, but also across the curriculum.143

In effect, since the Church still insists that a religious ethos should imbue all aspects of life in ‘their’ schools at both primary and secondary levels, the new RE syllabuses, with their lingering ambivalence representing only a limited compromise, may also be seen as a means to justify maintaining the school system largely unchanged in other ways. Without going into the detail of how these syllabuses have been implemented in schools, it should be mentioned that not all schools have adopted them, as they have been deemed too ‘academic’ in certain quarters. According to an RE teacher interviewed in 2007, only about 10 per cent of schools, catering mostly to a middle-class population, have actually adopted the full exam system with corresponding syllabuses. In a number of schools, there are also strong divisions between religious managers and the teachers, not all of whom share the views of the Catholic hierarchy, even if the vast majority would describe themselves as Catholic. Most religion teachers are no longer priests

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or members of a religious order, and teachers’ views on the nature and aims of religious education seem to vary hugely between individuals and between schools.144 Finding teachers for this subject also seems to have become an uphill struggle for many schools. On the side of children and young people, it should be noted that, at the annual session of the Irish Youth Parliament of the Republic of Ireland (Dáil na nÓg) in March 2006, over 66 per cent of the 200 delegates from thirty-four Youth Councils (Comhairlí na nÓg) voted in favour of replacing religion in schools with a subject focusing on ‘ethics, morals and other cultures’, as part of the effort to provide for a more inclusive education system.145 Conclusion: on the importance of the educational context At both primary and secondary levels, there is a striking contrast between history and citizenship syllabuses that strive to be pluralist, inclusive and even to some extent egalitarian and religious education syllabuses that still privilege the promotion of faith and of a Christian religious identity, even if they have become more open towards other major religious traditions at secondary level. This contrast reflects the ambivalence of the Irish State’s educational message that was already visible in the 1999 primary curriculum, between a recognition of the intrinsic diversity of Irish identity and the ongoing promotion of a particular religious identity. The context within which these curriculum contents are inscribed should also be taken into account as a determining factor. As we have seen, the cultural and civic dimensions of education have been assigned a secondary or peripheral place in the general education policy orientations defined by the Department of Education over the past decade or more. Within this context, there is some logic in finding that school history is given limited importance, while CSPE appears to be even less well regarded or treated. In the course of the 1990s, there was even an aborted attempt by the Department to drop History from the core subjects on the Junior Certificate syllabus.146 CSPE seems to be in an even less enviable position in many schools, according to interviews carried out in the early 2000s with educationalists involved in the development and implementation of the new syllabus, an evaluation of the situation that is confirmed by Jim Gleeson’s research on the subject.147 Few teachers are prepared to teach CSPE: a 2003 study showed that 80 per cent of those teaching it did so because they had to, to the extent that they were sometimes called ‘conscripts’.148 The subject is largely perceived as yet another add-on; the majority of teachers show little enthusiasm for it and admit that they are often uncomfortable with the active teaching methods the syllabus calls for. Such reluctance is bound to influence pupils who are already sensitive to the relative importance and status given to their various school subjects. Religious education is not well placed either in this hierarchy of status, despite its promotion to an examination subject. In one of the private secondary schools in Jim Gleeson’s survey (belonging to the Christian Brothers), both the school head and the teachers had a rather negative attitude towards

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CSPE, with one teacher explaining that ‘students see CSPE as something to be endured, like Religion’, while another, in response to an inquiry as to the status of CSPE in the school, answered ‘Zero. It has the same status as Religion.’149 Gleeson’s survey revealed significant differences in the ways community schools and private religious schools implemented the CSPE syllabus: school heads and teachers in the state-owned community schools had a much more positive attitude towards the subject, all of them stating that it was an important one, whereas the heads of private religious schools considered that citizenship education was already largely ‘covered’ by religious education and by the ethos of the school. Along with other specialists of citizenship education in Ireland,150 Dympna Devine makes it clear that educating for citizenship in schools does not amount to a recognition of children’s rights within the institution itself, stating that the best school for promoting citizenship would be one where democratic principles apply and where the pupils’ active participation in decisions affecting them directly is encouraged.151 Even if the new syllabuses for the secular subjects are now trying to convey an open, pluralist view of Irish identity, they apply only to the contents and not to the structure of the education system; we may therefore question their scope as agents of change within the current system. Notes 1 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 211. 2 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’. 3 For details on affiliations and a reflection on political implications of such a structural choice, see Ciaran Sugrue, ‘Whose Curriculum is it Anyway? Power, Politics and Possibilities in the Construction of the Revised Primary Curriculum’ in Ciaran Sugrue (ed.), Curriculum and Ideology: Irish Experiences, International Perspectives (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2004), pp.  167–208; and Gary Granville, ‘Politics and Partnership in Curriculum Planning in Ireland’, in Ciaran Sugrue (ed.), Curriculum and Ideology: Irish Experiences, International Perspectives (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2004), pp. 67–99. 4 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 7. 5 Granville, ‘Politics and Partnership’, p. 93. 6 Granville, ‘Politics and Partnership’, p. 68. 7 James Bennett, ‘History Textbooks in Primary Schools in the Republic of Ireland, 1971–1993’, Oideas, 42 (summer 1994), 26–38. 8 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 9. 9 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 28. 10 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, pp. 209–37. 11 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. vi. 12 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 6. 13 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 27. 14 Order of the various sections: ‘Quality in Education’, ‘Literacy and Numeracy’, ‘A Sense of Irish Identity’, ‘The Irish Language’, ‘The Spiritual Dimension’, ‘The European and Global Dimensions’, ‘Pluralism’, ‘Equality and Fairness of Access’, etc. Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, pp. 26–8.

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15 Catherine Maignant, ‘Une “spiritualité irlandaise” pour les années 2000?’, in Pascale Amiot-Jouenne (ed.), Irlande:  insularité, singularité? (Perpignan:  Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 2001), pp.  295–310; ‘L’autre chemin:  approche du néo-christianisme celtique’, Études Irlandaises, 26:1 (2001), 160–8. 16 ‘[D]‌ans toutes ses acceptions, la spiritualité irlandaise fait intervenir l’aptitude particulière qu’auraient les Irlandais à accéder à une expérience intime du divin, dont ils vivraient, par tradition, la présence en toutes choses’. Maignant, ‘Une “spiritualité irlandaise”?’, p. 299 (my translation). 17 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 58. 18 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 34. 19 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 36. 20 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 58. 21 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum:  Introduction, p. 58. (My italics.) 22 See information on NCCA website, www.ncca.ie/en/Curriculum_and_Assessment/ Early_Childhood_and_Primary_Education/Primary-Education/Primary_ Developments/ERB-and-E/ (accessed 14 March 2016). 23 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School; NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Post-Primary School (Dublin:  NCCA and Department for Education and Skills, 2006). 24 Department of Education and Science, Guidelines on Traveller Education in Primary Schools, pp. 34 and 45. 25 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 30. 26 See Martine Abdallah-Pretceille’s analysis of what she calls the ‘culturalist drift’ in L’Éducation interculturelle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), pp. 20–1 and 51 ff. 27 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 54. 28 For an insightful essay on the relative treatment of human rights and cultural diversity, see Diana Ayton-Shenker, ‘The Challenge of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity’, United Nations Background Note, published by the United Nations Department of Public Information DPI/1627/HR, March 1995 (available at www. un.org/rights/dpi1627e.htm, accessed 14 March 2015). 29 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 35. 30 NCCA, Guidelines for Schools; Intercultural Education in the Post-Primary School, p. 32. 31 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 54. 32 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Post-Primary School, p. 5. 33 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 22. 34 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 23. 35 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 86. 36 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights:  Second Shadow Report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (Dublin:  Children’s Rights Alliance, 2006), section 421, pp. 61–2. 37 Department of Education and Science and NCCA, Junior Certificate Religious Education Syllabus, p. 51. 38 NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Post-Primary School, p. 74. 39 For a more in-depth and radical critical analysis of interculturalism as multiculturalism in the curriculum, see Audrey Bryan, ‘The Co-articulation of National Identity and Interculturalism in the Irish Curriculum:  Educating for Democratic Citizenship?’, London Review of Education, 6:1 (2008), 47–58; also ‘Pedagogies of

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Privilege: Re-thinking Interculturalism and Anti-racism in Education’, in Sheelagh Drudy (ed.), Education in Ireland, Challenge and Change (Dublin:  Gill & Macmillan, 2009), pp. 226–40. 40 INTO, Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System (Dublin:  INTO, 2006), pp. 12–13. 41 Bennett, ‘History Textbooks in Primary Schools’, pp.  26–38; Karin Fischer, ‘L’Irlande aux Irlandais:  mais lesquels?’, Outre-Terre, 12 (autumn 2005), 65–77; ‘Une nation irlandaise “(ré)-inventée” dans les manuels d’histoire de la République d’Irlande, 1990–1997?’, in Nicole Ollier (ed.), Réinventer l’Irlande (Pessac: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, 2001), pp.  67–78; ‘L’Enseignement de l’histoire irlandaise dans les écoles du nord et du sud, 1921–1996:  divergences, convergences’, Études Irlandaises, 25:2 (2000), 113–24. 42 Department of Education, Primary School Curriculum: Teacher’s Handbook, Part 2, pp. 87–8. 43 Fischer, ‘Une nation irlandaise “(ré)-inventée” ’, p. 75; Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity’, pp. 318–19. 44 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, pp. 209–37; Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity’, pp. 311–24. 45 Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity’, p. 312. 46 Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity’, p. 313. 47 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, pp. 219 and 229. 48 Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity’, p. 322. 49 Fischer, ‘Une nation irlandaise “(ré)-inventée” ’. 50 Eamonn Brennan and Liam Hernon, Ages Ago (Dublin, Folens, 1996), p. 45, quoted in Fionnuala Waldron, ‘“A Nation’s Schoolbooks Wield a Great Power”:  How the Romans are Depicted in Irish History Textbooks’, in Carol Morgan (ed.), Inter- and Intracultural Differences in European History Textbooks (Bern:  Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 257–89, at p. 275. 51 Waldron, ‘ “A Nation’s Schoolbooks” ’, pp. 282–3. 52 Waldron, ‘ “A Nation’s Schoolbooks” ’, pp. 286–7. 53 See Gerry Jeffers and Una O’Connor (eds), Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2008). 54 Gerry Jeffers, ‘Some Challenges for Citizenship Education in the Republic of Ireland’, in Gerry Jeffers and Una O’Connor (eds), Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2008), pp.11–23, at p. 12. 55 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 225. 56 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, pp. 223–4. 57 European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Second Report on Ireland, Adopted 22 June 2001 (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2002), p. 13. 58 Department of Education, The Junior Certificate Civic, Social and Political Education Syllabus (1996), p. 7. 59 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 224. 60 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 224. 61 Fernand Ouellet, Les Défis du pluralisme en éducation:  essais sur la formation interculturelle (Québec: Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2002); César Birzéa, Stratégies pour une éducation civique dans une perspective interculturelle (Strasbourg: Conseil de l’Europe, 1993). 62 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 227.

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63 Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, pp. 212–13. 64 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, pp. 212–13. The development of the Civic, Social and Political Education syllabus in the mid 1990s met with a certain amount of political resistance from the government at the time, according to a member of the development team (confidential interview, 2001). 65 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 228. 66 For an overview of these changes, Patricia Kieran, ‘Promoting Truth? Inter-Faith Education in Irish Catholic Primary Schools’, in INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School: Issues and Challenges (Dublin: INTO, 2003), pp. 121–2. 67 OECD survey, quoted in Mary Raftery, ‘Lot to Learn from Boys Town Ethos’, Irish Times (13 September 2007). 68 Maura Hyland, Eleanor Gormally and Clare Maloney, Alive-O 3 (Dublin:  Veritas (The Children of God), 1998), inside cover page. 69 Veritas, Educational Resources Catalogue 2006 (Dublin: Veritas, 2006), p. 2. 70 See  www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_ ccatheduc_doc_17041998_directory-for-catechesis_fr.html (accessed 3 January 2013). 71 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, ‘Launch of New Catholic Religious Education CurriculumandProgramme’,29September2015,availableathttp://www.catholicbishops.ie/2015/09/29/launch-catholic-religious-education-curriculum-programme/ (accessed 14 March 2016). 72 Catholic Bishops’ Conference press release, ‘Launch of Catholic Primary  Schools in a Changing Ireland: Sharing Good Practice on Inclusion of all Pupils’ (12 March 2015), available at www.catholicbishops.ie/2015/03/12/launch-Catholicprimary-schools-changing-ireland-sharing-good-practice-inclusion-pupils/ (accessed 13 April 2015). 73 See full curriculum and guidelines on Veritas website, www.veritasbooksonline.com/ religious-education/re-curriculum-for-ireland.html (accessed 14 March 2016). 74 Joe Humphreys, ‘Catholic Schools Receive New Guidelines on Religious Teaching’, Irish Times (12 March 2015). 75 INTO press release, ‘INTO comment on the publication by the Catholic Schools’ Partnership’ (13 March 2015), available at www.into.ie/ROI/NewsEvents/Press Releases/PressReleases2015/INTOCommentonPublicationbytheCatholic SchoolsPartnership130315/Title,35075,en.php (accessed 14 March 2016). 76 Anne Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference? The Experiences of Minority Belief Parents in the Denominational Primary System’, in Jim Deegan, Dympna Devine and Anne Lodge (eds), Primary Voices:  Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools (Dublin:  Institute of Public Administration, 2004), pp. 17–36, at pp. 24–5. 77 Seán Flynn, ‘Department Delivers Scathing Report on Dublin Muslim School’, Irish Times (18 June 2009). 78 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 25. 79 INTO, Intercultural Education in the Primary School (Dublin: INTO, 2004), p. 59. 80 INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, p. 56. 81 INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, p. 63. 82 European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Second Report on Ireland, p. 18.

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83 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, sections 422 and 423, pp. 61–2. 84 Quoted in John Walshe, ‘School Chiefs Slam Plan for Common Religious Curriculum’, Irish Independent (8 March 2004). 85 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 18. 86 Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association, Management Board Members’ Handbook, rev. edn (Dublin: Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association, 2000). 87 Parents have filed complaints on this issue with the Equality Authority. Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 18. 88 Anne Lodge, ‘First Communion in Carnduffy:  A  Religious and Secular Rite of Passage’, Irish Educational Studies, 18 (spring 1999), 210–22. 89 For a general presentation, see Veritas Educational Resources Catalogue 2006, ‘Parish Resources’ section, pp. 20–1. 90 John Walshe, ‘School Principals Say Parents Must Take More Responsibility’, Irish Independent (30 January 2006). 91 David Quinn, ‘Hands Off Our Schools:  Archbishop Brady Hits Out at Critics of Catholic Education’, Daily Mail (8 February 2006), p. 8. 92 Catholic Schools’ Partnership, Catholic Primary Schools in a Changing Ireland: Sharing Good Practice on Inclusion of All Pupils (Dublin:  Catholic Schools’ Partnership, 2015). 93 Quoted in Emmet Oliver, ‘Attempt to Sack Principal Worsens School Religion Row’, Irish Times (18 April 2002); ‘Religious Differences: Chronicle of a Dispute’, Irish Times (30 April 2002). 94 Frank McNally, ‘Principal of Gaelscoil in Dispute over Teaching of Religion Sacked’, Irish Times (31 July 2002). 95 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum:  Introduction, pp. 8–9, 11, 16. 96 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 40. 97 Department of Education and Science, Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century: Report of the Working Group on Primary Pre-service Teacher Education (2002), pp. 102–3. 98 Department of Education and Science, Primary School Curriculum: Introduction, p. 11. 99 Waldron, ‘Making the Irish’, p. 236. 100 Veritas, Educational Resources Catalogue 2006, p. 2. 101 Williams, Faith and the Nation, pp. 114–15. 102 Dunne, ‘The Catholic School, the Democratic State and Civil Society’, pp. 216–17. 103 Mawhinney, Freedom of Religion and Schools, pp. 104–10. 104 Clarke, Church and State, pp.  214–15 and 226; ‘Teaching, Indoctrination and Freedom of Thought’, Oideas, 30 (spring 1987), 24–36; ‘Education, the State and Sectarian Schools’, in Tim Murphy and Patrick Twomey (eds), Ireland’s Evolving Constitution, 1937–1997:  Collected Essays (Oxford:  Hart Publishing, 1998), pp. 65–78. 105 Clarke, Church and State, p. 215. 106 Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 111. 107 Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 124. 108 Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 125. 109 From a series of interviews carried out in 2007/2008 with parent founders of these earlier schools. 110 Paul Rowe, quoted in Anne Byrne, ‘Diversity Is About More Than Religion’, Irish Times (28 September 1999).

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111 Mary Hanafin, quoted in Elaine Edwards, ‘State to Open Pilot Non-Religious Schools’, Irish Times, 13 December 2007. 112 Emma O’Kelly, ‘State Gave Commitment to Catholic Church on Education’, RTÉ News Special Report (7 June 2012). 113 O’Kelly, ‘Education Dept Ignored NCCA Warning over Religion Teaching’, RTÉ News (30 March 2012). 114 Presentation of ‘Goodness Me, Goodness You’ on the official website of Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board, available at www.ddletb.ie/ Primary-Level/Goodness-Me-Goodness-You.aspx (accessed 2 June 2015). 115 Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board, ‘Goodness Me Goodness You’. 116 O’Kelly, ‘State Gave Commitment to Catholic Church on Education’. 117 Department of Education and Science, Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century, pp. 102–3. 118 Department of Education and Science, Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century, pp. 102–3. 119 See also Submission 25 to the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector (2011). 120 INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School, p. 47. 121 INTO Education Committee, The Place of Religious Education in the National School System (Dublin: INTO, 1991), pp. 18–19. 122 INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School. 123 A teacher quoted in INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary, p. 47. 124 Pádraig Hogan, ‘Religion in Education and the Integrity of Teaching as a Practice’, in INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School (Dublin: INTO, 2003), p. 72. 125 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 52. 126 Patsy McGarry, ‘Religion Course at Last Meets Pluralist Reality’, Irish Times (9 May 2000); Olivia Kelly, ‘Putting Their Faith in Education: the New Junior Cert Religious Studies Syllabus Is a Lesson in Pluralism’, Irish Times (29 January 2002). 127 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 52. 128 Department of Education and Science and the NCCA, Junior Certificate Religious Education Syllabus, p. 5. 129 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 52. 130 INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School, p. 159. 131 For a comparative analysis of different types of religious education, see Fernand Ouellet, ‘Religious Values and Education in Plural Societies’, in James Lynch, Celia Modgil and Sohan Modgil (eds), Cultural Diversity and the Schools, 4  vols. (London: Falmer, 1992), vol. I, pp. 233–43. 132 INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School, pp. 158–9. 133 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 52. 134 See textbooks by Anne Boyle and Niall Boyle, All About Faith:  Complete Junior Certificate Religion (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2005); The Challenge of God: Exploring Morality, 3rd edn (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2003). 135 Lori Fields-Whelan and Niamh McDermott, A Question of Faith: Junior Certificate Religion (Dublin: EdCo, 2007), p. 268. 136 Fields-Whelan and McDermott, A Question of Faith, p. 172. 137 Niall Boyle, Faith in Action (Dublin:  Gill & Macmillan, 2008); Kevin Mullally, Pathways to God I and II (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2006); Sean Goan and Tom Ryan, Exploring Faith (Dublin: The Celtic Press, 2004).

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138 Orla Walsh, Know the Way: Junior Certificate Religions Education (Dublin: Veritas, 2007, ‘Printed with Ecclesiastical Approval’), pp. 315–16. 139 Walsh, Know the Way, pp. 316–18. 140 Walsh, Know the Way, pp. 402–65. 141 See Examination Papers: Junior Certificate Religious Education, 2003-9, published by Folens. 142 On the textbook series, ‘Into the Classroom’, in Veritas, Educational Resources Catalogue 2006, p. 14. 143 Department of Education and Science, Information Booklet for Schools on Asylum Seekers, p. 11. 144 From a 2007 interview with a Religious Education teacher trained at the Mater Dei Institute who had twenty years’ experience in a secondary Christian Brothers school in Dublin. 145 Aine Kerr, ‘Replacement of Religion as School Subject Urged’, Irish Times (27 March 2006). 146 See letters by renowned historians of Ireland in Ireland and Britain against this proposal in History Ireland, 2 (summer 1996). 147 Jim Gleeson, ‘The Influence of School and Policy Contexts on the Implementation of CSPE’, in Gerry Jeffers and Una O’Connor (eds), Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts (Dublin:  Institute of Public Administration, 2008), pp. 74–95. 148 Gleeson, ‘The Influence of School and Policy Contexts’, p. 82. 149 Gleeson, ‘The Influence of School and Policy Contexts’, pp. 84–6. 150 It is a recurrent theme in Jeffers and O’Connor, Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts. 151 Devine, Children, Power and Schooling, pp. 144–7.

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In this chapter I  will examine recent structural developments in the Irish educational system and the place of religion in its current make-up. In the Republic of Ireland, ‘diversity’ from a structural viewpoint above all means religious diversity, in terms of both administrative control and school attendance. Beyond an overview of the major characteristics of the system and of the contemporary debates about the opportunity of more or less far-reaching structural changes, the main question raised here is the following: can a system whose very structures reflect sectional and private interests (while being essentially financed by public funds) function as a public service of education ensuring equality of access and treatment to all children? At a time when cultural diversity, pluralism and intercultural education are celebrated in the school curricula, there is no escaping the question of whether the patronage structure of the Irish education system could still be considered adequate. The Catholic, mono-denominational nature of the vast majority of primary and secondary ‘State’ schools stands more and more clearly in contradiction with the progressive transformation of the curricula. Despite the introduction of more inclusive syllabuses and despite the undeniable efforts towards greater openness on the part of staff in numerous denominational schools,1 the increasing weight and the multiplication of religious and non-religious minorities over the past twenty years have brought to light the fundamental anomaly – which had been unsuccessfully challenged in the 1830s – of a national network of schools financed by public funds but belonging to the Churches and largely controlled by them. This state of affairs has been acknowledged as deeply problematic by many people involved in education in the Republic of Ireland. A teacher taking part in a discussion organised by the INTO in 2004 on intercultural education in primary schools pointed out: Can we have genuine intercultural primary education without confronting the major structural issue in primary education in Ireland? […] I acknowledge the tremendous work that is being done by teachers in denominational schools all over the country trying to address this problem. But, sooner or later, we as a society have

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to face this, that we cannot seriously go forward with a primary system unique in the developed world in which 99% of primary schools are privately owned religious institutions who, by law, must uphold one particular religious ethos.2

Three UN reports, published in 2005 by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in 2006 by the Committee on the Rights of the Child (in charge of controlling the progressive implementation of the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child in the countries that have ratified it) and in 2015 by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, contain a critical assessment of the consequences of the denominational structure of the educational system and legislation in the Republic of Ireland.3 The three reports called upon the Irish government to reform existing and proposed legislation in line with international human-rights standards and to increase the number of non-denominational or multi-denominational schools.4 The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination pointed out that racial and religious forms of discrimination are often interconnected: The Committee, recognizing the ‘intersectionality’ of racial and religious discrimination, encourages the State party to promote the establishment of non-denominational or multidenominational schools and to amend the existing legislative framework so that no discrimination may take place as far as the admission of pupils (of all religions) to schools is concerned.5

In its report submitted to the Committee for the Rights of the Child in 2006, the Irish Children’s Rights Alliance took up these calls from the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.6 The publication of the Ryan Report in May 2009, the result of about ten years’ work of a special commission of inquiry, caused a nationwide shock:7 it confirmed the ‘endemic’ character of the abuse perpetrated upon children in schools and homes run by twenty or so religious congregations over the course of the twentieth century.8 This indisputable confirmation of the violence inflicted on many children in religious institutions until recently sparked renewed debate about the denominational structure of the educational system, these same congregations still owning about 1,000 primary schools in the Republic, or a third of all schools. The Commission blamed the Department of Education for its ‘deferential and submissive attitude’ towards the religious congregations, considering that it ‘compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty of inspection and monitoring of the schools’.9 In November 2009, the Murphy Report, dealing this time with the sexual abuse of children perpetrated by priests  – frequently in charge of the primary schools in their parish – in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin between 1975 and 2004, further brought to light a widespread phenomenon in Ireland and prompted journalists and commentators to ask similar questions.10 The report also showed that instances of sexual abuse had been routinely covered up by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. The 2011 Cloyne Report (focusing on what had happened in a particular diocese) claimed that abuses had been covered up with the tacit encouragement of the Vatican,11 but also pointed out a level of state

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neglect that was acknowledged as such by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in a landmark speech in the Dáil on 20 July 2011.12 Kenny was speaking about child protection, but he did not extend his reflection to the issue of state control of the education system. Several commentators were struck by Pat Carey’s words after the Ryan Report was published. The Secretary of State to the Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil evoked ‘an opportunity to explore how the State can take on its responsibilities for delivering an educational system’, again revealing a state of affairs unique in a developed country.13 One of the commentators was Fintan O’Toole, a well-known journalist and essay-writer, who regularly denounces the lack of a true national system of primary education and the continuing control of the Catholic Church over the vast majority of schools, describing it as ‘a more and more absurd anachronism’ with regard to the social developments of the past thirty years.14 Structural permanence, limited change Despite a number of attempts to adapt the education system (as we will see), its main structures have remained unchanged to this day, with the patronage model a seemingly intangible overarching principle. In basic terms, this model may be described as a form of delegation by the State of the responsibility for school management to mainly private actors, with the vast bulk of schools owned and controlled by the Catholic and Anglican Churches for historical reasons. One major consequence is an inevitable tension between these largely unchanged patterns and the profound changes that have taken place in Irish society. More than 96 per cent of state-funded primary schools are still owned and controlled by religious institutions, about 91 per cent by the Catholic Church and 5 per cent by the Church of Ireland. In 2015, there were also a dozen Presbyterian schools, one Methodist school and two Muslim schools, founded in 1995 and 1999 respectively. No new Muslim school has been created since, despite several requests in the years 2000.15 In the past few years, fourteen ‘interdenominational’ schools have also been founded:  they are in fact placed under the joint ‘patronage’ of the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, and most are schools in which all teaching is done in Gaelic or Irish, part of the Gaelscoileanna under the aegis of An Foras.16 The schools founded by the Educate Together body are meant to be integrated (or desegregated) in every way, although the State has chosen to characterise them only as ‘multi-denominational’.17 They have multiplied over the past fifteen years, from a handful of primary schools until the early 1990s to seventy-four primary schools and three secondary schools in 2014/15, with a significant increase in the past five years. Since 2008, a second type of desegregated primary school has been created, the Community National Schools, with nine operating in 2014/15 (see below). The fact that in the past few years an increasing number of parents have turned to alternatives to mono-denominational schooling may be seen as a sign of the need for change

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felt by part of the population, and this changing pattern has been acknowledged as such by the Department of Education.18 But the networks of Educate Together and Community Schools still only account for a small proportion of the 3,300 or so primary schools. In 1999, for the first time in the history of the Irish State, the government decided that it would finance all new school grounds and buildings, which meant that from then on all new schools would be state-owned, and not just state-funded. This decision has facilitated the development of Educate Together schools, in particular, but without putting into question the structural basis of the system: it only concerns new schools, and the State allocates schools to patrons on the basis of a lease or a deed of trust that allows each patron to assert a particular ethos in ‘their’ schools.19 Since 2011, new procedures have been put into place – and a New Schools Advisory Group established – that require evidence of parental demand for each new school as well as for ‘diversity of patronage’ in schools, with different patrons being allowed to vie for precedence in each case, in the name of ‘optimising parental choice’.20 The New Schools Establishment Group is expected to draw conclusions from surveys carried out regarding parental preferences on school patronage and advise the Minister for Education accordingly.21 These new rules have mainly resulted in the creation of some new Educate Together schools in the past couple of years. The Department Commission set up in 1998 to advise the government on the financing of new schools had only recommended that Educate Together schools be treated in the same way as all-Irish schools, with state funding of school sites and buildings, but Minister for Education Micheál Martin decided to extend this to all new schools, most likely to avoid antagonising the powerful denominational school lobby, as Andy Pollak suggested at the time.22 The Catholic Church greeted this change favourably, as it found it could now count on increased state funding without having to relinquish any element of control over Catholic schools, thanks to the church–state arrangement based on the deeds of trust mentioned above.23 Attempts to adapt the structure of the school system in the Republic of Ireland were first initiated by groups of parents, with the setting up of the Educate Together association in 1984 (now registered as a private charitable company), and, more recently, directly initiated by the State, with the opening of the two pilot primary schools called community schools in 2008. In Ireland, this new development has generally been presented as conforming to the patronage model, since the local Education and Training Boards (formerly VECs) are said to be the school patrons, but these boards are a type of local public authority, which sets them apart from private interest groups. In this sense, the nine Community National Schools are the first primary schools in the Republic of Ireland under full public control (until then the VECs had only managed secondary schools). The first two schools were set up under the responsibility of County Dublin VEC.24 For the first time, the State took the initiative, although it had been urged to do so by the VECs themselves.25 The confusion between the overt maintenance of the patronage model on the one

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hand, and this de-facto structural departure from that model on the part of the State (albeit on a very small scale) gave rise to a polemic at the time, with some interest groups considering that the government was overstepping its bounds by not respecting its own remit as a ‘neutral arbitrator’ between different private educational providers.26 These new schools were at first officially presented as ‘interdenominational’ and then as ‘open to children of all religions and none’.27 The issue of religious education during the school day quickly came to the fore, as we saw in Chapter  4, and it does not seem to have been resolved.28 At a time when the population was still increasing rapidly, the Community National Schools were envisaged as a model for the new schools that would have to be set up in the future. Since the demographic slowdown and the change in government in 2011, another seven such schools have joined the first schools in this new network, but both the increased government focus on ‘parental choice’ and the continuing commitment to the patronage model have allowed Educate Together to take the upper hand over the past few years in terms of the number of new schools opened under its aegis. Even at the time, this new model of school was meant as a limited adjunct to the existing system. It was always presented by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin as an ‘additional option’ that could prove useful especially in rapidly developing districts, and certainly not as a potential replacement for other existing models.29 In political terms, it also provided a way for the government to avoid having to envisage any actual reform of the education system as a whole in the face of a changing population. From a structural perspective, the teacher-training centres, while developing links with existing secular universities over the past twenty years (Mary Immaculate College with the University of Limerick, St Patrick’s College with Dublin City University), have remained owned and ultimately controlled by the Christian Churches until now. Significant changes are taking place, with the projected incorporation by September 2016 of St Patrick’s College, the Mater Dei Institute of Education and the Church of Ireland College of Education into Dublin City University as a single faculty or institute of education, but the extent to which these changes will have an impact on actual control issues remains to be seen. While Mary Immaculate College and St Patrick’s College have had lay presidents since the late 1990s, in 2015 Mary Immaculate College was still explicitly presented as a ‘Catholic College of Education’30 and St Patrick’s College was said to be ‘a publicly-funded higher education institution in the Catholic tradition’.31 As with the deeds of trust for Catholic primary schools, despite the Catholic Church’s recent withdrawal from direct day-today management, it has retained a significant measure of control through the adoption of Instruments of Government, with a number of powers reserved to the Catholic trustees.32 As a result, ‘the authority of both the governing bodies of St Patrick’s College and Mary Immaculate College rests with the Archbishop of Dublin and with the Bishop of Limerick respectively’.33 Whether through the teacher-training colleges themselves (the Church of Ireland College of Education in particular obtained the explicit legal right to discriminate in

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favour of Protestant students in 2000)  or through school boards, religious authorities have retained considerable control over the recruitment and career prospects of the vast majority of primary-school teachers in the Irish State.34 At post-primary level, the situation is even more complex due to the existence of a variety of schools and of a rather opaque management system, but here again the Catholic Church, and to a lesser extent the Church of Ireland, have remained involved in the administration of the vast majority of schools.35 There are four kinds of schools, secondary, vocational, comprehensive and community schools. The secondary schools are ‘privately owned and managed’; they belong to the various religious authorities and cater for about 54 per cent of pupils. Vocational schools were originally non-denominational. When they were created by the Irish State through the Vocational Education Act of 1930, they were placed under the control of VECs made up of ‘representatives of the local authorities, and various community and education interests’.36 From the 1940s onwards, however, representatives of the two main Christian Churches appeared on these committees,37 which helps explain why vocational schools are now described as ‘interdenominational’ in official listings.38 Comprehensive and community schools are also state-owned (they were created by the State after free secondary schooling was introduced in the late 1960s) and described as ‘interdenominational’ (the main religious interests are represented on their boards of management).39 In other words, even though vocational, comprehensive and community schools belong to the public sector, they cannot be considered as non-denominational. The controversy that raged at the end of the 2000s over cuts to the special state funding scheme for Protestant fee-paying secondary schools has been extensively dealt with elsewhere.40 As Daly has shown, it could be seen as an illustration of the unsatisfactory ‘ad hoc framework for accommodation’ and of the limited scope of the patronage system in terms of pluralism and equality even between patrons.41 Religious decline and ways of retaining church control over schools and teacher-training Overall, although the Irish school system might appear not to have evolved in any significant way, there have been developments within the Catholic network itself, as a result of the dramatic decline in the number of members of religious congregations in Ireland and, hence, in the number of those who might have been teachers over the past thirty years. According to the CORI, in 1969/70, about 2,300 members of religious orders still received salaries as teachers, which amounted to a third of all teachers in the privately owned secondary schools. By 1995/96, this figure had gone down to 753 (or 5.9 per cent of teachers), about 40 per cent of whom would reach retirement age within the next ten years.42 At primary level, by 1992, members of religious congregations only represented 5 per cent of all teachers.43 In its 1997 publication on the future role of religious congregations in Irish

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education, CORI admitted that this continuous decline meant that, in the relatively short term, their members would completely disappear from all the teaching and administrative posts that they had occupied up to then in schools.44 In effect, in 2007/8, according to Department of Education figures, there were only 173 religious teaching in primary schools, a residual number with regard to the 30,300 or so Irish primary-school teachers.45 Department statistics for the post-primary level for their part stopped specifying the number of religious teachers in 1998/99. This decline, and the religious congregations’ growing inability to manage their schools directly, led them to come up with alternative ways of retaining control over both the property and the religious character of the schools. Hence the development of trust funds and the setting up of foundations over the past few years. The Christian Brothers their network of ninety-six primary schools (close to 35,000 pupils) in the Republic of Ireland to a foundation created for that purpose, the Edmund Rice Schools Trust. This trust has become both the owner and manager of the schools, and it is responsible for their Catholic character.46 The mission of Edmund Rice schools has been defined in a charter whose purpose is to perpetuate the Christian Brothers’ religious educational heritage. The schools themselves are described as ‘Christian communities of learning and teaching’, whose first mission is to ‘nurture faith, Christian spirituality and Gospel-based values’.47 In the same way and for the same reasons, the Presentation Brothers set up the Presentation Brothers’ Schools Trust for their schools in 2009. At post-primary level, after ten years of discussions among themselves and of talks with the State, five religious congregations set up a common foundation in the form of a private company in 2007: Catholic Education An Irish Schools Trust (CEIST Ltd).48 The trust manages 112 Catholic secondary schools catering for about 55,000 pupils (i.e. 50 per cent of the private secondary sector and 16 per cent of the total number of post-primary pupils). Its stated aim is to maintain the religious orientation or ethos of these schools.49 Members from the five orders share responsibility for overseeing the company, which is managed by a board that is also made up partly of religious (including the representative of the Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education and Formation, Monsignor James Cassin, when the board was first set up).50 A charter was drawn up after a consultation process in the schools whose aim was to ‘capture the richness of the existing ethos, capture Catholic values in education and create an inspiring vision for the schools into the future’.51 All school boards have been asked to commit themselves to this charter and to ensure that their own mission statements reflect its main tenets.52 The aim was clearly to ‘pass on the torch’ to de-facto non-religious school heads and teams while creating an imperative framework that would channel both their work and school life as a whole in a specific way. The overall aim of CEIST asserts a common purpose and assumes a common faith in each of the related school communities: ‘CEIST aims, in a spirit of collaboration, to continually invite its members to reach their potential, in the context of a school faith community

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which seeks to consciously embody a true expression of the Reign of God as announced by Jesus Christ.’53 Through the Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education, the Catholic hierarchy has been encouraging and supporting both these trusts and Catholic schools in general. In 2011, the Irish Bishops’ Conference and the CORI established a joint education service called the Catholic Schools’ Partnership that caters for Catholic schools in both parts of Ireland and whose aim is to preserve Catholic schools and their religious mission.54 The Catholic schools outside the sphere of control of religious congregations and their trusts belong to the Catholic Church itself. They have diocesan trustees, and their patron is a member of the Catholic hierarchy. Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin occupies this function for the vast majority of Dublin primary schools. The religious school manager of times past was eventually assisted or replaced by a board of management (from 1975 in primary schools, 1985 in secondary schools), but the balance of powers remained largely unchanged until 1998, with the patron still directly nominating a majority of the board members. Until the 1980s, the local parish priests also still generally chaired the boards of National Schools. The 1998 Education Act restricted the power of patrons by introducing new regulations for the composition of the boards, which now had to include a specific number of elected parents and teachers (one elected teacher plus the school head) as well as representatives of the ‘local community’ jointly chosen by patron-nominated board members and by the parent and teacher representatives. At the same time, the Act reaffirmed the existence and role of patrons by giving them an explicit legal status. A patron may decide to do without a board of management (although this is now rare) or to change the board; he still officially nominates the board members, after consultation with the associations of parents and school managers and the teacher representatives. He also decides who will chair the board.55 According to the 1998 Act and to Department of Education publications, each board must manage the school in the name of the patron and is responsible before the patron for ensuring the preservation and maintenance of the school’s characteristic spirit or ethos.56 Despite some major prior debates on the democratisation of school management and contrary to some of the earlier government plans in the 1990s,57 the 1998 Education Act actually represented a compromise in favour of religious interests. It was hailed as the first major piece of legislation on the whole school system since Independence, but it proposed only limited elements of reform that preserved church control over the schools (or more generally the private control of patrons). In the Catholic teacher-training centres, as direct management became problematic, new structures were set up to perpetuate control over both ownership and overall mission. The Christian Brothers’ training centre, Saint Mary’s College of Education in the Marino area of Dublin (usually called the Marino Institute of Education), is a case in point. It was founded in 1905 and was officially recognised by the Irish Department of Education in 1929, at a time when all its students were themselves Christian Brothers. The first lay

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students were admitted in 1972, and in 1976 a partnership agreement was signed with Trinity College, Dublin, for the development of a common training programme and diploma, with Marino students now attending certain courses at the university. Direct involvement by the Christian Brothers came to an end in 2000 when Brother Nolan retired as Head of College, even if the brothers who still live on the premises ‘continue to support and manage many activities within the Institute’.58 The training centre has had a lay president, Anne O’Gara, since 2006. A  system of trusteeship was here again set up in 2007/8, when the Institute was placed under the joint supervision of the European Province of the Christian Brothers (itself created in 2007 and based in Marino) and of Trinity College, Dublin.59 The Christian Brothers have remained the trustees, however, and nominate the great majority of the Governing Body members. The Governing Body was until recently chaired by a religious, Sister Bernadette MacMahon.60 In 2006, the Christian Brother trustees gave the newly created Governing Body the following missions (among their ‘six guiding principles’): ‘Be ecumenical and respectful of people of other faiths’ (no mention is made of people with no religion) and ‘Be supportive of the mission of Catholic education by assisting the processes to articulate the ethos of Catholic education.’61 The stated objectives of the Marino Institute on its website stress the importance of intercultural education in Ireland and the reality of a more diverse school population, but they insist on perpetuating the Catholic mission of the schools by ‘developing innovative programmes to support the Catholic ethos in schools with a diverse pupil population’ and on ‘cherishing our Irish cultural and linguistic traditions and connections’.62 The convictions of Edmund Rice, founder of the Irish Christian Brothers, are to remain at the heart of the Institute’s educational mission and are thus reaffirmed ‘throughout all the change and development of recent years’. Phrases used tend to assume that the students themselves are Catholic, with, for example, the objective of ‘promoting the harmonious growth of the whole person in faith, life and culture’.63 Lay presidents have also replaced clergymen at the head of the two main Catholic teacher-training centres. St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, was managed by the Vincentian fathers until 1999, when Pauric Travers, a former history lecturer in the college, became the first lay president. The college itself still belongs to the Catholic Church and has remained under the control of a governing body constituted by Archbishop Connell, ‘the Manager’, in 1997.64 This governing body is made up of both religious and lay persons; it determines the ‘educational character’ of the college, controls its budget and all financial aspects, manages all aspects of employment and human resources and is responsible for selection and enrolment policies.65 Similar developments have taken place in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, whose first lay president in 1999 was Peadar Cremin. As we have already noted, in 2015, the official website of Mary Immaculate College still asserted its Catholic character. At the same time there has been a semantic shift in recent years with a somewhat more open wording. In

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2009/10, the Mary Immaculate College website stated that, as ‘A Catholic foundation, MIC maintains an active Christian life where Christian values, freedom and personal responsibility are honoured.’ By 2015, this sentence had disappeared and had been replaced by the following declaration in the College’s mission statement: The College seeks to foster in its students a spirit of justice and compassion in the service of others, together with an openness to the religious tradition and values of each individual. The College promotes a sense of identity enriched by an awareness of its Catholic tradition, the cultures, languages and traditions of Ireland, and its special commitment to the Irish language. Mary Immaculate College respects cultural diversity.

Rather than an overt assertion of a Catholic or Christian ethos informing all life and work in the College, a correspondence is now made between Irish identity and a specific religious tradition, alongside Irish cultural traditions. In a similar vein, while in 2010 St Patrick’s College still asserted its Catholic identity and its commitment to ‘creating a community of learning in which Catholic religious values and equity are promoted’, by 2015 its mission statement presented the college as being both ‘in the Catholic tradition’ and ‘inclusive, welcoming and respectful of those of all religious and secular traditions’.66 In a 2008 interview, Pauric Travers, first lay president of St Patrick’s College, explained that he had been nominated by the Archbishop of Dublin but was paid by the Irish taxpayer and considered himself a ‘public servant’.67 He contended that the Irish education system needed to adapt further to the new Irish society and that it was for the State to take responsibility in this area, alluding to the possibility of a transition for the college towards a university-type status as a fully public higher-education body. To come back to Mary Immaculate College, it is also interesting to note that, in a departure from the college’s general mission statement, there is no allusion in the Faculty of Education’s own mission statement to religion (and this was already the case in 2009) or even to ‘moral, religious and spiritual development’, as in the objectives set out in the 1999 primary-school curriculum. Instead, the emphasis is on its aim ‘to foster the social, emotional and intellectual development of our students’ and to ‘engender in our graduates a commitment to the full social, emotional, intellectual development, and cultural diversity of the children they teach so that as citizens of the future they are competent, assured, and caring members of society’. The ‘Catholic tradition’ (along with the notion of ‘spiritual development’) reappears only in the presentation of the Department of Learning, Society and Religious Education, one of the four departments within the faculty.68 Despite the decline in numbers of religious that has forced the Catholic Church and congregations to relinquish direct management, they have thus managed to retain overall structural control over ‘their’ teacher-training colleges and have introduced legal constraints to ensure maintenance of a Catholic ethos in these colleges. These measures or safeguards may not be enough,

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however, to perpetuate this Catholic orientation in the face of social changes. There has been a gradual move away from a full assertion of Catholic ethos in practice, but the generally discreet presence of the Catholic hierarchy may still be felt at times in the colleges. Members of staff within the teacher-training centres have repeatedly alerted the public to the remaining tensions and to some of their effects on both students and staff.69 The public debate of the 2000s: voices for change It is common practice in the Irish State to discuss educational issues by putting forward the views of patrons, most of whom are private organisations with no claim to direct democratic representation, as the so-called main ‘stakeholders’ of Irish education, rather than the views of organisations also involved in education but based on democratic forms of representation (such as those of teachers, and more recently principals and parents). The choice here is to reverse this trend by looking at the ‘public debate’ first through the lens of democratic expression, in political circles, organisations of teachers, principals and parents and through public-opinion polls. The more and more widely shared sense of a hiatus between a largely unchanged education system structurally and an increasingly diverse population gave rise to a public debate that has continued since the 2000s. Even if the need for change has been recognised for many years by a majority of educational, political and religious actors, there have been significant differences of opinion on the extent of the necessary reforms. One major bone of contention has been the choice between diversity in school and a diversity of schools. Many teachers, especially at primary level, have seemed ready to embrace radical structural reform and have been pressing the State to take full responsibility in this area. Irish public opinion has for years now been open to significant change, according to successive opinion polls. But the Irish political mainstream has remained on the whole reluctant to envisage any extensive overhaul of the system or has even opposed any structural change outright. Of the main political parties in the Republic, only Labour has repeatedly expressed the need for change, but there have also been persistent differences of opinion within Labour on what that change should mean. In 2006, Pat Rabbitte, party leader from 2002 to 2007, called for an end to church control over publicly funded primary schools, drawing the ire of the catholic hierarchy.70 Ruairi Quinn, party spokesperson on education in 2009 before becoming Minister for Education and Skills from 2011 to 2014, insisted, however, on the need for a rebalancing of the patronage system, with fewer schools under church control, rather than a complete overhaul.71 This rebalancing was the main objective behind the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism launched by Quinn after he became minister; the possibility of a departure from the patronage system was never included in the brief of that forum as envisaged by the government.72 Both before and after entering office, Quinn consistently reaffirmed the commitment of the Labour Party to the primacy of parental choice,

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which was not the angle chosen by Rabbitte when he had insisted that publicly funded schools should cater for pupils of all religions and non-believers together. After Denis O’Sullivan, Eoin Daly has identified the new politics of ‘school choice’ that supports a continuation of the patronage system as deriving from a neo-liberal vision of parents as educational consumers.73 In 2009, Quinn declared, ‘The cultural commitment of Irish parents to the education of their children in the school of their choice, where possible, is a strong legacy from the past which we should maintain.’74 The ‘where possible’ caveat was the main weak spot of that position, since it amounted to an implicit acknowledgement that within such a system all parents could never hope for equal opportunity of choice, depending both on where they lived and on their particular beliefs. This was repeatedly pointed out by the former Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald (who remained, however, isolated within his party on the subject),75 and also by leaders of the INTO whenever they were given an opportunity to raise the issue, if only from the floor, as during the Conference on the Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs organised by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin in June 2008.76 Sinn Féin, while it has asserted the need for structural changes to ensure ‘equitable education for all’, has also remained cautious about what this might mean despite its egalitarian pretensions in other fields.77 Its 2007 manifesto on education and childcare contained a vague, open-ended declaration of intent: ‘Review the current system of ownership and management of schools with a view to ensuring equitable education for all, sufficient school places for all pupils wherever they live and the best management of schools.’78 Since 2011, official Sinn Féin declarations or press releases have been broadly in line with current Fine Gael/Labour policy, insisting on parents availing themselves of the opportunity to have their voices heard in surveys carried out about school patronage.79 The only political parties calling explicitly and consistently for radical structural reform have been two small left-wing parties:  the Irish Socialist Party and the Irish Workers’ Party. The Socialist Party has called for the setting up of a truly national, state-run, secular school system with democratic boards of management, with religious instruction after school hours for those who want it, as the only way to put an end to all forms of discrimination and to uphold human rights.80 The Workers’ Party also supports the development of a secular, state-funded system of education, considering that the very concept of ‘faith-based schools’ necessarily leads to segregation and to sectarian approaches.81 While none of the main Irish political parties have lent it their official support to date, the idea of a complete overhaul of the education system has found favour among a significant number of teachers, through the voice of the INTO in particular, and with the population as a whole, as we will see. Teacher organisations have been calling for change. There has been a degree of debate among them as to the exact extent of the desired change, but their discourse has been among the most consistent and coherent overall from

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a democratic and human-rights perspective and specifically from the standpoint of intercultural education. Dónal Ó Loingsigh, a former INTO president, developed a critical analysis of the denominational nature of the education system in a couple of articles published in the early 2000s.82 In his writings he insisted on the necessity for the Republic of Ireland to thoroughly review its educational structures in order to meet the imperative of equality of access to education for all children and to ensure that Irish laws and practices comply with UN conventions and with European legislation: Providing an intercultural education that incorporates equal recognition to other religions appears to be incompatible with the ethos of a denominational school. Thus I  believe that the creation of a truly intercultural educational system in Ireland demands far reaching structural changes in how schools are both established and managed.83

At the time, Ó Loingsigh imagined a system where the various religious denominations would be involved equally in the management of common primary schools but addressed neither the practical difficulties of such an arrangement (and how it was bound to fall short from ensuring full equality of treatment for all children) nor the potential alternative of a more democratic management structure. Since then, the INTO has further developed its thinking in this area, while keeping within its sights the perspective of a system of common primary schools serving their local environment and community (in the widest sense of the term). Declan Kelleher, INTO President in 2008 and 2009, reminded those present at the June 2008 Conference on the Governance of Future Primary Schools that the majority of Irish primary schools were small and often rural. He raised the crucial issue of funding a system in which an increasing diversity of school types strived to accommodate parental choice when the existing system was already in a state of chronic underfunding. He called instead for a global vision that would ensure that each school would serve the whole local community, presenting this as a ‘moral obligation’.84 This position was entirely in line with that adopted by John Carr, General Secretary of the INTO from 2000 to 2010, as he expressed it, for example at an INTO conference on religious education in primary schools in 2004.85 At the same conference, Pádraig Hogan, a lecturer at the Education Department of NUI Maynooth, expressed a similar preference for common schools: ‘If we were starting with a clean slate now, I would like to think that we would start with the idea of the local school, and with an acknowledgement of its diversity’.86 The proceedings of the 2004 INTO conference, while showing that debate was going on within the organisation on the place of religion in Irish primary schools, also made it clear that there was a widely shared questioning of the current structure of the system and specifically of religious control, as the concluding comments of the report from the discussion workshop gathering teachers from Catholic schools confirmed:

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One member of the group suggested that the whole primary school system should become non-denominational – ‘especially since the state pays for the running of the schools. Then each denomination would have to cater for their own specific needs in religion. It would make life easier for the teacher in the classroom.’ This comment was greeted with general agreement, and the discussion concluded.87

The Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN), for its part, was officially recognised by the State in 1999. Its recent creation may be seen as a result of the ‘secularisation’ of principals. In 2006, it came into direct conflict with the Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association (CPSMA), when the head of the IPPN, Sean Cottrell, took a stand against religious instruction and especially against preparation for the First Communion and Confirmation within school hours.88 Cottrell declared that families, not schools, should by right take responsibility for their children’s religious education, with direct help from clergy. He insisted that schools could no longer be expected to prepare children for sacraments, if only for practical reasons, with classes now comprising children from five to fifteen different religious traditions. In response, the CPSMA, through its general secretary Dan O’Connor (a priest), reaffirmed the role of Catholic schools in the religious education of children. As far as church management of schools was concerned, the IPPN representative also declared that in a modern, secular and multicultural society it was time for Churches to waive their claim to direct involvement:  ‘The day is gone when organised religion in denominational form is required to govern and manage schools.’89 At post-primary level, there have been differences of opinion between the two main teacher organisations. The ASTI, which gathers a majority of teachers in secondary (mostly denominational) schools, has avoided taking an explicit stance. This is apparent both from an analysis of the general contents of its website over the past ten years and from declarations by Moira Leydon, current Assistant General Secretary responsible for ‘furthering the educational aims of the Association’.90 At a 2000 conference on school culture and ethos, for example, she refused to take a stance or even to tackle the issue directly.91 By contrast, the TUI, which was originally the designated union for teachers in (State-owned) vocational schools but which now organises teachers at both post-primary and higher-education levels in Ireland, has taken an unequivocal stance against religious segregation. At the same 2000 conference, a former TUI president, Billy Fitzpatrick, called for a system where all schools would be either multi- or non-denominational.92 In its submission in response to the 2008 Audit of School Enrolment Policies in respect of Second Level Schools, the TUI reiterated its commitment to the principle of freedom of access to education and explicitly condemned schools that might select pupils on religious (and other) grounds.93 Through its proposals and general involvement in the 2000s, the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA) also pushed the government towards structural change. Unlike private interest groups such as the Churches or Educate Together, the IVEA represented public-sector schooling, overseeing the national network of VECs involved in secondary-level and further

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education. (The Education and Training Boards Act 2013 transformed the thirty-three VECs into sixteen education and training boards, the IVEA becoming Education and Training Boards Ireland.) In 2006, the IVEA proposed its services for a restructuring of the primary-school sector. The proposal developed out of a local initiative, when the County Clare VEC decided to apply to the State to become the administrator of two Steiner primary schools that had not managed to obtain official recognition (the schools had approached the VEC in the first place).94 The application was rejected by the Department of Education, but the idea caught on, and the County Dublin VEC was asked to manage the first two Community National Schools created in 2008. The INTO had also worked actively in this direction: in 2006, it recommended the creation of just such community schools as an emergency measure in areas with high population growth.95 This new involvement of the VEC sector as a public administrator (or public-service ‘patron’) for primary schools was greeted favourably by the National Parents’ Council in April 2006.96 The Council, through the voice of its president, Fionnuala Kilfeather, also joined the teacher organisations in calling for a national debate on the management of schools. Keeping in mind that the National Parents’ Council had been set up in 1985 as the national representative organisation for parents of children attending primary school,97 such a standpoint (added to those of other representative organisations mentioned above) would tend to confirm that a significant proportion of Irish public opinion was prepared to envisage far-reaching changes in the education system. This is in line with the results of a national public consultation entitled ‘Your Education System’ launched in 2004 by Minister for Education Noel Dempsey. As part of this consultative process the Dublin Educational Research Centre carried out a public-opinion survey that comprised a number of questions related to the denominational nature of schools.98 The results (see Table 5.1) showed that about 60 per cent of respondents favoured a system of non-denominational schools but with religious instruction provided for within school hours; 49.6 per cent agreed with the idea that schools should not be denominational and that religious groups should make provision for religious instruction outside school hours, with 35.5 per cent disagreeing and 14.8 per cent undecided. Given that more than 80 per cent of Irish people still define themselves as Catholic, such a result clearly undermined the Catholic Church’s propensity to present itself as a natural spokesperson for the ‘Catholic community’ and Catholic parents in the area of schooling. It also showed that the notion of ‘parental choice’ was more complicated than is often assumed. Broadly speaking, both the selection of questions and the answers obtained gave an insight into the complexity of the issue and showed that many Irish people had difficulties adopting a clear overall stance. Opinions were divided on the issue of the right of parents to be provided with separate schools that reflect their culture and/or their views on religion (44.8 per cent in favour, 44.7 per cent against, 10.5 per cent undecided). The related question did not specify, however, how such schools would/should be financed and/or managed.

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Table 5.1  Percentages of respondents agreeing/disagreeing with statements regarding the management of schools. Agree strongly Groups of parents should have a right to be provided with separate schools that reflect their culture and/or their views on religion Some schools should be non-denominational Schools should not be denominational but should provide for religious instruction Schools should not be denominational, and religious groups should make provision for religious instruction outside school hours

Agree Disagree somewhat somewhat

Disagree strongly

Don’t know/ No opinion

23.7

10.5

11.1

33.7

21

18.2

42.3

16.4

9.5

13.7

17

44

19.1

6.5

13.4

14.2

35.4

24.7

10.8

14.8

No similar detailed survey has been conducted since, but an opinion poll commissioned by the Irish Times in 2010 confirmed that a significant majority of the population (61 per cent) felt that the Catholic Church should relinquish control over the primary-school system.99 In 2008, the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland commissioned its own survey, targeting only the parents of children enrolled in Catholic primary schools (north and south).100 As might be expected, the bishops logically insisted on results that might be seen to justify their education policies, such as the response by a vast majority of parents that they were ‘satisfied with their decision to send their child to the school they currently attend’.101 Upon closer analysis, the results showed parental attitudes that seemed ambivalent, and sometimes contradictory, but also open to change and at variance both with the relative weight of Catholic schools in the system and with the position of the Catholic Church on religious education in particular. Asked what type of school they would choose if they had a choice, less than half the respondents (48 per cent) answered ‘a school under the management of a religious denomination’. The fact that these parents’ children already attended a Catholic school shows that, for many, a denominational school was a default option. The results were roughly similar within the category of Catholic parents, which seems logical since they formed the vast majority of the sample: almost half (49.8 per cent)

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declared that if they had a choice between different types of schools, they would choose a school that would not be mono-denominational for their children, a figure that was not taken up, unsurprisingly, in the bishops’ press release at the time. Opinion was then divided as to the type of school parents would choose, between a school that would offer a ‘common religious framework’ (37.1 per cent), a school that would ‘not be managed by a religious denomination’ (8 per cent) and ‘another type of school’ (4.7 per cent).102 The Educate Together association, for its part, has also been particularly vocal in this respect over the past fifteen years. Its position has been ambiguous, however, since it has not been calling for a complete overhaul (that might also put its own school network into question) but rather for a diversity of schools to be made available to parents. Stressing parental choice has been seen by Educate Together as the most effective way to develop its own schools as an educational option among others and thus meet increasing parental demand for Educate Together schools.103 Among the many voices calling for wide-ranging structural reform and asking the State to take responsibility to ensure equal rights in the field of education, as we have already mentioned, there have also been some eminent public figures such as the former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and the media commentator Fintan O’Toole. After a consultation process in 2011, the Irish Human Rights Commission issued a report entitled Religion and Education: A Human Rights Perspective, in which it stressed the need for extensive changes to accommodate this perspective. As yet no statistical survey seems to have been carried out as to the opinion of the users of schools – the young people themselves – on these issues. The motion adopted by the Irish Youth Parliament in 2006 (already mentioned above) confirmed that, in that quarter, there was a groundswell of support for substantial change as far as the place of religion in school was concerned, with two-thirds of delegates voting in favour of replacing religious education with an alternative subject dealing with ‘ethics, morals and other cultures’. On the overall issue of church involvement in the school system, a widening gap has thus appeared between a broadly conservative and cautious political mainstream and a significant proportion of Irish public opinion much more open to far-reaching change, though still ambivalent in some ways. In this respect, teacher unions, and especially the INTO at primary level, have been at the forefront of calls for structural change. The recent government move towards increased, though still limited, diversification and the related surge in the number of Educate Together schools through the use of parental surveys (with parents being asked to choose between various prospective patrons) has defused some of the tensions but without addressing the issue in any systemic way and thus without providing a solution that would ensure full equality of access and treatment for all children. Faced with so many calls for reform, both dominant actors in the field of Irish education – the State and the Catholic Church – have wavered between defending the status quo and considering limited changes. Over the 2000s, some members of the Catholic hierarchy even seemed, paradoxically, more

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open to new developments than the government itself, as long as these might help preserve the great majority of Catholic schools in the long run. Indeed, until the change in political majority in 2011, both Church and government insisted that the Irish education system and existing schools could adapt to the new Irish society without the need for any further involvement from the State in structural or systemic terms. The only limited departure from this stance had been the opening of two new community schools under VEC management in Dublin under Bertie Ahern’s government in 2008. As we have seen, Department of Education publications repeatedly referred to the necessity for ‘inclusion’, but the official position of both State and Church during those years was that existing denominational schools were already inclusive since they accepted all (or most) children (though with a number of restrictions, as we will see). To the extent that the State still seemed to wait for prior approval from the Catholic Church before considering any departure from the existing system, it seems appropriate to start by examining the position and strategy of the Church itself in recent years. The Catholic Church; or, how to have it both ways The heightened tension between the public role played by Catholic schools as ‘national schools’ in the Irish State and their denominational function has led to debates even within religious supervisory bodies on the social role of their schools as well as on their enrolment policies. Minority Christian schools in Ireland have long had policies that strive to preserve their distinctive character, with enrolment policies giving priority to children from their own denomination (and then, in the following order, from other Protestant denominations and from Catholic families, before considering children from any other backgrounds). As a result of the quasi-hegemonic position of Catholic schools, especially in small towns and rural areas, the Catholic Church and religious orders have generally not been in a position to adopt similar enrolment policies. The official position of the Church has thus remained that Catholic schools are inclusive and that they welcome and accept all children, while at the same time individual members of the hierarchy have openly questioned this position. In 2000, after Michael Smith, Bishop of Meath, had made some critical comments about parents who did not share the Catholic faith or were detached from it taking advantage of the existence of Catholic schools (giving the example of those parents that asked for their children to be exempted from religious instruction),104 the Catholic Information Office was quoted as saying that there was no change in its school enrolment policy, where Catholic schools were open to all children. However, many bishops, it said, would undoubtedly have some sympathy for Dr Smith’s remarks when faced with a similar situation in which parents who had lost contact with the Church were availing of Catholic schools.105

The reality on the ground was not as clear-cut as the official church position implied. As the INTO stated in its 2006 publication on ‘newcomer children’ in

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the primary education system, ‘Many Catholic schools have enrolment policies which give priority to Catholic children.’106 In the same declaration in 2000, in a rather paradoxical move that revealed the attitudes of both Church and State, the Bishop of Meath called on the government to take action: ‘Dr Smith said he would like to see the Department of Education taking a more active role in providing non-denominational education for those who wanted it instead of expecting the Catholic Church to provide and run the schools.’107 Similarly, in a 2006 interview, Archbishop Sean Brady, Primate of Ireland (who was to become Cardinal a year later) acknowledged the absence of choice for some parents but declared that this was not the problem of Catholic schools and refused to envisage any decrease in the number of schools under church patronage or any ‘dilution’ of their ethos: It’s true that other parents must have their rights respected too, and schools will have to be provided for them. But that doesn’t mean the Catholic Church should step down and diminish or dilute our schools. […] These are Catholic schools, and the Catholic Church has a perfect right to its schools. Catholic parents have a right to a Catholic education for their children. The Education Act permits this.108

We will deal with the issue of ethos and its implications in terms of inclusion and discrimination in the following chapter. Until the beginning of the 1990s, although the Catholic Church was already having to adopt a more defensive stance in the face of a changing society, the Catholic school had not yet abandoned its historic ambition of control over Irish society in the name of the Church and hence its aim to maintain its quasi-hegemonic position in the system.109 Since the end of the 1990s there has been a shift in the position of the Catholic Church as far as its place in the education system is concerned, towards a relative strategic retreat. Over the past few years, the Church has, in fact, adopted a two-pronged policy, insisting on the one hand on its right and its duty to keep its schools, and, on the other hand, accepting that the Catholic sector could become – or be presented as – an option among others, the latter view allowing them to further assert the Catholic identity of their schools. The Catholic hierarchy in Ireland is not a monolithic block, however, and there have been some differences of opinion within it. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has seemed open to significant developments. He has repeatedly expressed the view that about half of the 500 primary schools under his patronage in Dublin could be divested and transferred to other patrons, his position being that the Catholic ethos could then be consolidated in those schools that remained Catholic.110 He has said on numerous occasions that Catholic education should now be an option among others in the Irish State, a plurality of schools being, in his opinion, the best way to fulfil the needs of a pluralist society.111 This new attitude has been hailed by many in Ireland as a welcome turning point in the position of the Church. But in the Irish context it also reveals the inherent limitations in the discourse of inclusiveness of the Catholic Church. It reaffirms that Catholic schools exist principally to cater for the children of Catholic families. It pushes the entire system towards

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a diversification of schools and, hence, towards forms of segregation along religious lines. The general policy document published by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2007 detailed that position.112 From a church perspective, this diversification is seen as the lesser of two evils: better to have a plurality of different denominational and multi-denominational schools rather than a public system of secular common schools catering for all children. It was with this in mind that Archbishop Martin first publicly envisaged the possibility of some Catholic schools in Dublin being transferred to other patrons in 2008. This had already happened in the case of the Dublin 15 school that had been opened in 2007 as an emergency measure: the government had asked the Catholic Church to open the school, even though about 80 per cent of the pupils did not come from Catholic families, and it was transferred to the County Dublin VEC a year later. Archbishop Martin had then spoken of a form of ‘structural divestment of the Catholic patron’, ‘where the demand exists’.113 It was the first time such a possibility was envisaged publicly, and this at the instigation of the Church rather than the State.114 It did mark a certain shift in the church position, considering that the Church had been known to obstruct attempts to reassign existing school buildings under its ownership (even when left empty) to other patrons such as Educate Together, which had tried in vain to rent buildings from the Church in Galway in the early 1990s for example.115 Despite growing acceptance of a diversification of school types in Ireland, both in official church discourse through the Catholic Bishops’ Conference and on the ground, the dominant position has remained that the Church should do its utmost to keep most of its schools and thus broadly maintain its current weight within the education system, this leading in turn to the necessity of accepting a diversification of its school population. Although the new Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn in 2011 envisaged a process of transfer to other patrons for some Catholic schools (in line with Archbishop Martin’s suggestions) and was more openly critical of church claims of inclusiveness in schools,116 in the main this church position has been effectively encouraged and supported by the Irish State, in the name of the ‘efficient use of resources’.117 This stance largely explains why the government discourse on ‘the inclusive school’, which was logically meant to provide a rationale for the accommodation of diversity within existing schools, has been taken up by Catholic representatives, at least up to a point. In media interviews as well as in their publications, members of the Church systematically insist that their schools are inclusive. In 2007, Monsignor James Cassin, Executive Secretary to the Education Commission of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, went as far as issuing a formal complaint to RTÉ Radio 1 after a programme in which Fintan McCutcheon, a teacher in an Educate Together school who had previously sat on the board of management of a Catholic school, had explained that the enrolment policy in his former school gave priority to (baptised) children of Catholic parents and that this did indeed result in excluding some children from school.118 In 2015, former Education Minister Ruairi Quinn insisted that such enrolment policies were still very much in force wherever there was pressure

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on numbers, which was acknowledged at the time by Michael Drumm, Chair of the Catholic Schools’ Partnership.119 The Church position of maintaining its ownership and control of most of its schools regardless of the diversification of the school population is obviously in line with the long-term strategy of securing the sector’s future through the setting up of trusts and the signing of deeds of trust. Church control over secondary-level schools has also been reasserted, with the Catholic hierarchy still demanding some measure of control over new schools set up in expanding neighbourhoods and taking exception to the fact that the majority of the thirty or so new secondary-level schools opened over the 2000s were not Catholic, according to a confidential document addressed to Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe in 2008.120 In the late 2000s, members of the Catholic hierarchy actually tried to claim some form of shared control over even the transferred schools, envisaging a joint patronage system that would allow it to retain the right to have a say on the recruitment of teachers and on the character of the schools, with a view to preserving its vision of religious education at primary level. Bishop Leo O’Reilly spelled out this position at a conference at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, in May 2009. He confirmed that transfers could be envisaged but only after consultation and in cases where Catholic children only represented a small minority of the school population. He stated his preference for a joint patronage system involving both Church and State (through the Department of Education), on the model of secondary-level community schools, a system that might also include another religious patron in certain instances. According to him, such an arrangement would allow for the setting up of schools that would be ‘genuinely multi-denominational’ and inclusive, while enabling the Church to have ‘a voice in shaping the ethos of the school’.121 Such a view would imply either a limited perception of the potential diversity of the school population in terms of beliefs or a curious conception of the ‘majority rule’ usually put forward by the Church to justify preserving the characteristic spirit or ethos of its schools. According to this view, the Irish Catholic hierarchy expected to retain a position of control, which it might share with another religious patron but which would allow it to inform the school ethos, in places where Catholic children would only be a small minority. This will to ensure Church ownership and control even over schools with a small minority of pupils from Catholic families was confirmed recently, further undermining previous or parallel Church discourse on potential divestment: on the occasion of the launch in March 2015 of new Church guidelines on inclusiveness in Catholic primary schools, Father Michael Drumm, Chair of the Catholic Schools Partnership, explained that they had studied ‘schools with large numbers of non-Catholic pupils’ for examples of ‘good practice’ and mentioned ‘an excellent document from the Vatican on intercultural dialogue in Catholic schools’, deemed particularly useful for Ireland thanks to the fact that ‘they’ would be ‘used to dealing with Catholic schools where Catholics are a small minority’ in other countries.122

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Running counter to the dominant trend, a minority within the Catholic Church has been questioning the legitimacy of perpetuating the place of the Church within the Irish education system from a social perspective and even asking whether clinging to this place is really in the Church’s interest from a religious perspective. The 1973 FIRE Report (already mentioned in Chapter 1) was drawn up by a working group composed of religious and lay members. Its authors expressed a wish for a number of Catholic schools to ‘survive’, but they acknowledged that religious schools were ‘less and less needed to provide a service in education’ and considered that the State would ‘increasingly care for that aspect’.123 More recently, in a speech made before the National Council of Priests of Ireland, in Athlone in September 2009, a highly respected Catholic figure, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, founder of the Irish Immigrants’ Council, called on the Catholic Church to consider withdrawing entirely from the management of schools.124 In her view, the circumstances that had led the Churches to invest in education had changed radically; the Church should now come back to its primary mission, the transmission of faith and of Catholic values, and leave the responsibility of managing schools to the State. The Catholic Church thus finds itself pushed towards becoming only one manager among others in the nationwide market of schools, but it has remained very much attached to its historical prerogatives in the field of Irish education. It seems that the Catholic hierarchy may now be prepared to make some concessions, especially in densely populated areas such as Dublin, but that it still intends to keep the vast majority of its schools. Successive Irish governments have made it possible for the Church to maintain this position by shying away from any significant structural reforms and by continuing to rely on the Catholic network of schools to play the role of a national public network. Fianna Fáil governments of the 2000s: living in denial The position of successive Fianna Fáil governments during the 2000s rested on the idea that the existing system could legitimately be considered as a national system providing a public service of education. Thus, the opening of schools managed by County Dublin VEC in the late 2000s could be considered as a departure from this assertion (since it amounted to a recognition that the existing system might no longer be fully adequate) and from the conception of the role of the State as arbitrator between private patrons that had been developed since the 1990s. As we saw, Educate Together then accused the government of failing to respect its own modus operandi. At the time, Educate Together was ‘competing’ for schools in the same areas, and it could boast of having a high number of pre-registrations from parents, but the government chose to open these two new schools under VEC control instead. The Fianna Fáil government insisted that such schools would remain a small addition to the existing system and that it would keep to its traditional role, generally speaking.

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By contrast, there were calls for an extension of the new model, notably from Michael Moriarty, General Secretary of the IVEA, who described it as an ideal model for Irish schools, since it meant all children could be together under the same roof rather than being separated in different school types.125 Judging this new but very small addition to the National School network from the perspective of the adaptation of the education system to the new social reality in Ireland, media commentator Fintan O’Toole offered the following analysis: ‘This is a welcome development in principle but, in reality, it represents a response so timid that it seems to ignore the very problems that have prompted it.’126 The very limited nature of this structural innovation – within an Irish context, since internationally the principle of local schools managed by local education authorities is common – led to a paradoxical situation, with the State coming across as more conservative than the Catholic Church, at a time when the Church (through Archbishop Martin) now publicly acknowledged that the virtual Catholic monopoly at primary level was a ‘historical hangover’ that did not reflect current realities.127 In June 2009, Eamon Gilmore, Leader of the Irish Labour Party, declared that Archbishop Martin was ahead of the government on the issue of school patronage.128 One may question the assumption that multiplying school types at primary level would be a progressive move. But it is not surprising that the apparent readiness of the Catholic Church to envisage change was welcomed by many in both political and educational circles; it contrasted favourably with government inaction at the time. In the mid to late 2000s, despite repeated calls from many educational and political actors, including opposition parties, the INTO, the Parents’ National Council and the Catholic Church itself, successive Fianna Fáil governments refused to convene a national forum that would address the issue of educational structures.129 The one-day Conference on the Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs that was finally convened by the government on 27 June 2008 was clearly oriented and organised so as to avoid any substantive debate on this issue. As the conference title suggested, and as was confirmed in new Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe’s opening speech, participants were expected to focus first and foremost on issues directly related to future new primary schools and specifically on the government project of setting up some community schools in expanding urban areas, and not on the system as a whole.130 The Archbishop of Dublin’s intervention was given pride of place at the conference as the second (and last) keynote speech after that of the Minister, by contrast with other patrons and in breach of their supposed equal status from a government perspective. In his speech, Archbishop Martin gave his support to the government project while defending the place of Catholic education in the system.131 Church and State thus appeared hand in hand in their views and general approach at the conference. The Fianna Fáil governments of the mid to late 2000s claimed to be accompanying and facilitating change, but they generally refused to take action directly in structural terms (apart from the opening of the two Community Schools in

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2008), in line with the role the Irish State had chosen for itself historically.132 In a Dáil debate in February 2006, Education Minister Mary Hanafin declared, ‘change is happening and it is being facilitated’.133 The choice of wording and its implications as to the role actually played by the State would appear to be a good illustration of the general outlook. There were several possible reasons for this stance, one major factor being financial: there was never any question of creating a network of schools that would run parallel to the existing ‘national’ system. On the other hand, the Fianna Fáil governments were not prepared to confront the Church directly on this issue, and their representatives in fact repeatedly praised the Catholic Church for its contribution to Irish education and insisted that the Catholic Church had a legitimate claim to its schools and to the maintenance of a Catholic ethos in those schools.134 In the course of the same Dáil debate in 2006, Mary Hanafin also responded to calls for structural change (from a member of the Labour Party) in the following way: I have no intention of changing the management of schools throughout the country. I am not the manager or owner of schools. I do not own the sites and I am not a patron, so it is not possible to do so, nor do I want to ignore the contribution made by the present boards of management.135

The iterative use of the negative form is a perfect illustration of the refusal of the government at the time to face the issue directly and to consider departing from the self-imposed historical rule of the delegation of the public or national service of education to private owners and managers. During that Dáil debate, Mary Hanafin famously compared the then leader of the Labour Party, Pat Rabbitte, to Henry VIII trying to force the Churches to give up their lands. She thus chose to put forward both the sacrosanct principle of private property and the right of Churches to ‘their’ schools rather than the responsibility of the State in education. Similarly, in reaction to the critical reports from the UN committees mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Mary Hanafin explained in September 2007 that there would be no change in the legislation, as ‘it reflect(ed) the Irish education system’.136 The turn of phrase itself suggested, rather surprisingly, that the law was meant to reflect reality rather than to improve it. From a broader perspective, the government position highlighted the complex relationship between Church and State:  the State preserved and maintained the Churches’ power of control by relying on them – and in particular on the Catholic Church, of course – to manage the vast majority of schools. The status and function of Catholic schools thus oscillated between public and private, so that they were expected to respond to the demands made on them by the State and especially cater for all children in all areas where no alternative choice existed. In a Dáil debate in February 2008, the Fine Gael Education Spokesman Brian Hayes proposed that a third of places in Catholic schools be reserved for non-Catholic children (with similar measures in other denominational schools). In her answer, Education Minister Mary Hanafin first insisted that

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in accordance with the 1998 Education Act, school patrons were free to set up their own enrolment policies.137 She then shifted the debate to a detailed presentation of the new community-school model, a model that would be integrated in the sense that it would welcome all children equally regardless of religious background but that was never meant to expand beyond a few urban areas. This response confirmed that, from a government perspective, the only true issue of school ‘integration’ or ‘inclusion’ that might require direct action was in the Dublin districts that were rapidly expanding as a result of immigration. The Fianna Fáil government thus refused to face the much wider reality of socio-cultural change and increasing diversity on the Irish soil – and its inevitable consequences in terms of school population in all areas  – despite contradictory declarations by government members such as Integration Minister Conor Lenihan, who insisted that the Irish socio-cultural diversity should be dealt with in a systemic way.138 Other discordant Fianna Fáil voices made themselves heard in the late 2000s, as was the case with Pat Carey (already quoted above), who had been a primary-school teacher for thirty years and who called for a transfer of Irish primary schools to a state system. In 2009, he declared that a model better adapted to the current Irish situation should be developed and contended publicly that the State had up to then shirked its responsibilities in the field of education.139 In reaction, a government spokesperson then insisted that Carey had expressed himself on a strictly personal basis. Unsurprisingly, such voices remained isolated within Fianna Fáil. Diversification, fragmentation and perpetuation No Irish government has questioned the patronage system, even though it is highly unusual from a European perspective. The Irish State has kept to its historical role as funder of schools that are managed by private patrons, the only exceptions being the minority of schools under VEC control. Since the 1990s, its overt function (in structural terms) has been to preserve or find a balance between patrons and to arbitrate between them when the need arises, such as in the case of new schools. This political choice has been based on a discourse of freedom and pluralism:  first, the freedom of different private interests or patrons to retain their respective networks of schools, to develop them should there be parental demand and to impress upon these schools their particular orientations; second, the freedom of parents to choose a school for their child, although such freedom has always been curtailed by constraints linked to the existing system.140 Pluralism has been understood mainly in terms of a plurality of models or types of schools. Since the Irish national education system was based on religious segregation and on the delegation of control to patrons, religious diversification could be expected to lead both political and religious actors to envisage and facilitate a corresponding diversification of school types. Strictly speaking, however, the only structural development amounting to a recognition of this religious

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diversification has been the two Muslim primary schools created at the end of the 1990s. The few new Community Schools and the growing number of Educate Together schools are meant to bring children together regardless of religion. As a result, these new, much smaller networks now run parallel to the existing network of religious schools. Both the Community Schools and the Educate Together schools have arguably been used by the State to keep in check any further diversification along religious lines, but they have also, paradoxically, added to the fragmentation of the system. Indeed, with some nuances of approach between the Fianna Fáil-led governments of the 2000s and the Fine Gael–Labour coalition of 2011–16, the Irish State has remained officially committed to a form of structural ‘pluralism’, but to a very limited extent from the perspective of religious diversification. The reluctance to envisage any further diversification of school types can be easily explained on financial grounds. It would be materially impossible to satisfy every single parental preference through an increase in the number of schools in each area, which explains the restrictive policy adopted by successive Irish governments as far as official recognition of new schools is concerned. At the same time, from such a perspective, the logical conclusion, at least in all rural and smaller urban areas, would be for the State to turn the whole network of Catholic schools into community schools, a radical option that has never been officially envisaged up to now. Another issue has been the reluctance of successive governments to accept any further increase in the number of Muslim schools in particular. In Cork, there have been calls to open a Muslim school for many years; similar calls have been made in other areas, such as Tralee.141 The issue has proved all the more delicate as the most recent Muslim school, in Cabra Street, Dublin, gave rise to a controversy in 2009 when an inspection report pointed to problems in the school, including teachers with little or no training, too much time devoted to religious instruction and a refusal to follow the music syllabus.142 Given the difficulties encountered by the State in its attempts to encourage school transfers from one patron to another (mainly from Catholic patronage to Educate Together control) through parental surveys or polls under the Fine Gael–Labour coalition of 2011–16, the current trend seems to be a perpetuation of the great majority of existing denominational schools and of a slow, parallel development of Educate Together schools (and perhaps community schools to a lesser extent). In the mid-term, this would encourage a new form of segregation between denominational, mostly Catholic schools (with a higher proportion of non-Catholic children than in the past) and schools catering for children of ‘all religions and none’. The sustained (though still limited) growth of Educate Together schools was at first checked and is now facilitated by the State, but the far-reaching transformation of the system that may have been expected by some when new Education Minister Ruairi Quinn launched the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage in April 2011 has not come to pass.143 This might have been expected given that the very remit of that forum did not make it possible to question the patronage system itself and allowed for a perpetuation of segregation

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along religious lines in the school system. After the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism, David Tuohy remarked that the government-led debate had focused on which private patron should run which school.144 In a 2015 article, Nathalie Rougier and Iseult Honohan also contended that the capacity for incremental change was in fact limited within the existing system, with inevitable continuing tensions.145 Daly, for his part, has described the ‘secularised, “choice”-oriented rationale’ for the patronage system as another ‘justification for the status quo’.146 In this light, it is not surprising that issues of rights and religious discrimination in school have remained. Notes 1 Dympna Devine, Immigration and Schooling in the Republic of Ireland:  Making a Difference? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 76–8. 2 INTO, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 59. 3 Alison Mawhinney explores the complex interplay between Irish reports and UN observations in Freedom of Religion and Schools, pp. 86 and 110–15. 4 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding Observations of Ireland’s Second Report under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (2006), p. 14, paragraphs 60 and 61; UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Concluding Observations on the Third Periodic Report of Ireland (June 2015), p. 10. 5 UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observa‑ tions of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination:  Ireland (2005), paragraph 18. 6 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, p. 61. 7 Patsy McGarry, ‘Sexual Abuse “Endemic” in State-Run Institutions’, Irish Times (20 May 2009). 8 Set up in 2000, the Commission heard the testimony of more than 1,000 persons who had spent their childhood in 216 religious institutions in the Republic between the 1940s and 1980s. Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Commission Report, 20 May 2009. 9 Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Commission Report, vol. IV, chap.  6, conclusion 6.03. 10 Mary Raftery, ‘Bishop Lied and Covered Up’, Irish Times (27 November 2009); RTÉ News (27 November 2009), www.rte.ie/news/2009/1127/abuse.html (accessed 30 November 2009). 11 Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Diocese of Cloyne. 12 Enda Kenny, Dáil Éireann Debate, vol. 739:3 (20 July 2011). 13 Patsy McGarry and Harry McGee, ‘Carey Says State Must Take Control of Church-Run Schools’, Irish Times (1 June 2009). 14 Fintan O’Toole, ‘Lessons in the Power of the Church’, Irish Times (6 June 2009); ‘Arrogant Demand for Control Has Not Changed’, Irish Times (26 May 2009); ‘Catholics Should Go Public’, Irish Times (12 October 2004). 15 See Minister for Education Mary Hanafin’s declaration on 24 April 2008: ‘22 New Primary Schools Receive Recognition from September 2008’ (Press release on education.ie); ‘Proposals Include Five Muslim Schools’, Irish Examiner (17 November 2007); ‘Approval Sought to Open Kerry’s First Islamic School in Tralee’, Kerryman (21 November 2007).

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16 See www.foras.ie for a list of these schools. In 2015, there were sixty-two all-Irish primary schools and three all-Irish secondary schools in the Republic (two of these opened in Dublin in 2014). 17 Anne Byrne, ‘Diversity Is About More Than Religion’, Irish Times (28 September 1999). 18 ‘For historical reasons, most primary schools are state-aided parish schools, although this pattern is changing’, www.education.ie/en/The-Education-System/ Primary/ (accessed 20 March 2015). 19 Dónal Ó Loingsigh details the type of contract or deed of trust that binds Catholic schools in ‘Intercultural Education and the School Ethos’, in Fintan Farrell and Philip Watt (eds), Responding to Racism in Ireland (Dublin:  Veritas, 2001), pp. 115–23, at p. 120. 20 ‘Establishing a New School’, www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/ Establishing-a-New-School/ (accessed 20 March 2015); Department of Education Press Release, ‘Minister Quinn Announces Patronage of New Primary Schools to Open in 2014’, 26 September 2013. www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/ Press-Releases/2013-Press-Releases/PR2013–09–26.html (accessed 20 March 2015). For an in-depth critical analysis of this government stance and the idea of school choice, see Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, pp. 235–84. 21 ‘Diversity of Patronage’, www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/ Diversity-of-Patronage/Diversity-of-Patronage-Survey-of-Parents.html (accessed 20 March 2015). 22 Andy Pollak, ‘State to Pay Full Purchase Cost of All School Sites’, Irish Times (11 January 1999). 23 Áine Hyland gives an insight into the negotiations between the Christian Churches and the State that led to this arrangement as well as into the main clauses of the different deeds of trust in ‘Multi-denominational Schools in the Republic of Ireland, 1975–1995’, Cycnos, 13:2 (1996), 29–43, at pp. 39–40. 24 Elaine Edwards, ‘State to Open Pilot Non-Religious Schools’, Irish Times (13 December 2007). 25 Katherine Donnelly, ‘VECs Ask Minister for “Cradle to Career” Campuses’, Irish Independent (4 May 2006); Seán Flynn, ‘Shortage of Pupils Delays Opening of Dublin School’, Irish Times (8 May 2008). 26 ’12 New Educate Together Schools to Open September ’08’, ETEN (Educate Together Electronic Newsletter), 8:2 (24 April 2008). 27 Niall Murray, ‘Doubts over Primary School Plans’, Irish Examiner (14 December 2007). 28 Michael Nugent (Chairperson of Atheist Ireland), ‘Atheist Ireland Replies to Minister for Education Re VEC Community Schools’, open letter of 12 July 2012, www. teachdontpreach.ie/2012/07/atheist-ireland-replies-to-minister-for-education-revec-community-schools/ (accessed 20 March 2015). 29 Mary Hanafin, Dáil Éireann Debates, vol. 647 (19 February 2008). 30 Mary Immaculate College website, www.mic.ul.ie/Pages/Welcome.aspx (accessed 26 March 2015). 31 St Patrick’s College’s mission statement, www.spd.dcu.ie/site/about/mission.shtml (accessed 28 March 2015). 32 Instrument of Government signed in 1997 for St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, supplemented by a 2008 Linkage Agreement between St Laurence O’Toole Diocesan Trust, the Archbishop of Dublin and Dublin City University; successive

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versions of the Instrument of Government for Mary Immaculate College from 1978 to 2013 (latest version on Mary Immaculate College website). 33 See detailed submission by the Director of the Graduate Diploma in Education (Primary Teaching) in St Patrick’s College (since 2007) to the 2011 Forum on Patronage and Pluralism, www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/Conferences /Patronage-and-Pluralism-in-the-Primar y-Sector/Patronage-For um -Submissions-June-2011/General-Public-June-2011/Submission-25.pdf (accessed 20 March 2015). 34 SI No. 216/2000, Employment Equality Act, 1998 (Section 12) (Church of Ireland College of Education) Order, 2000. 35 Drudy and Lynch, Schools and Society in Ireland, p. 92. Louis O’Flaherty, Management and Control in Irish Education:  The Post-Primary Experience (Dublin:  Drumcondra Teachers’ Centre, 1992). 36 Department for Education and Skills, Preface:  Post-Primary Schools  – School Year 2007–2008. 37 Drudy and Lynch, Schools and Society in Ireland, pp. 80–2. 38 Department of Education, Post-Primary Schools Listings (accessed 20 March 2015). 39 Drudy and Lynch, Schools and Society in Ireland, pp. 80–1; Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, pp. 47–8. 40 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, pp.  274–81; Iseult Honohan and Nathalie Rougier, The Embodiment of Tolerance in Discourses and Practices Addressing Cultural Diversity in Irish Schools, Accept Pluralism Working Paper 13/2011 ( San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute, 2011), ‘Case Study 1: Removal of Funding for Protestant Fee-Paying Schools’, pp. 17–29. 41 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, pp. 280–1. 42 Education Commission, CORI, Religious Congregations in Irish Education: A Role for the Future? (Dublin: CORI, 1997), p. 8. 43 Drudy and Lynch, Schools and Society in Ireland, p. 92. 44 Education Commission of the Conference of Religious of Ireland, Religious Congregations in Irish Education, p. 9. 45 Department of Education statistics, Teaching Posts (30 June in Given Year) in National Schools (Number) by Sex, Teacher Status and Year, Central Statistics Office (2008 was the most recent year available on 26 March 2015). 46 John Walshe, ‘End of Era for Christian Brothers’, Irish Independent (19 June 2008). 47 Edmund Rice Schools Trust, www.erst.ie/asp/section.asp?s=75 (accessed 21 September 2009). 48 The Daughters of Charity, the Presentation Sisters, the Sisters of the Christian Retreat, the Sisters of Mercy and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. See www. ceist.ie. 49 John Cooney, ‘Nuns Set Up Trust to Ensure Catholic Values Protected’, Irish Independent (14 June 2007). 50 See ‘Who We Are’, available at www.ceist.ie/about_us/index.cfm?loadref=169 (accessed 21 March 2015). 51 Catholic Education An Irish Schools Trust, Charter (Kildare: CEIST, 2007). 52 See www.ceist.ie/about_us/index.cfm?loadref=8 (accessed 21 March 2015). 53 ‘Who We Are:  Aims’, www.ceist.ie/about_us/index.cfm?loadref=4 (accessed 21 March 2015). 54 See Catholic Schools’ Partnership website (www.catholicschools.ie) and address by Cardinal Seán Brady at the launch of Catholic Schools Week and the inauguration

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of Catholic Schools’ Partnership (28 September 2011); Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, A Pastoral Letter:  Vision 08, A  Vision for Catholic Education in Ireland (Maynooth: Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, 12 May 2008), p. 10. 55 Department of Education and Science, Boards of Management of National Schools: Constitution of Boards and Rules of Procedure (2007), pp. 3–5. 56 Education Act, 1998, section 15; Department of Education and Science, Boards of Management of National Schools, p. 3. 57 For an analysis of debates and government projects in the 1990s, see Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Schools’, pp. 38–40. 58 Marino Institute of Education website, www.mie.ie/About-MIE/Campus/TheChristian-Brother-community-and-MIE.aspx (accessed 30 March 2015). 59 Edmund Rice Global Network website, www.edmundrice.net/index.php?option =com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=83#european-province (accessed 30 March 2015). 60 This was still the case in 2009. Marino Institute of Education website, ‘Governing Body 2008–2009, www.mie.ie/About-MIE/Structure-and-Admini‑ stration/Administrative-Departments/Governing-Body-2007–2008.aspx (accessed 20 September 2009). 61 President’s Report 2007 (Dublin: Marino Institute of Education, 2007), p. 9. 62 ‘Recent History/Development’, www.mie.ie/About-MIE/Campus/Recent -History–Development.aspx (accessed 30 March 2015). 63 ‘Recent History/Development’. 64 St Patrick’s College website, ‘About Us: History’, www.spd.dcu.ie/site/about/history. shtml (accessed 30 March 2015). 65 St Patrick’s College website, ‘About Us:  Governing Body’, www.spd.dcu.ie/site/ about/governing_body.shtml (accessed 30 March 2015). 66 St Patrick’s College website, ‘About Us: Mission Statement’, www.spd.dcu.ie/main/ about/mission.shtml (accessed 2 February 2010); ‘About Us:  Mission Statement’ (accessed 30 March 2015). 67 Interview with the author at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin. 68 Mary Immaculate College, Faculty of Education, Department of Learning, Society and Religious Education, mic.ul.ie/education/lsre/Pages/default.aspx (accessed 30 March 2015). 69 In 2007, a member of staff at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, was called to order for having dared to offer a critical analysis of a speech by Archbishop Martin (patron of the College) in a Master’s class on ‘Tensions between State and Faith Schools’. Fintan McCutcheon, ‘Is Our School System Institutionally Racist?’, Metro Éireann (13 September 2007). See also submission 25 by the Director of the Graduate Diploma in Education (Primary Teaching) in St Patrick’s College to the 2011 Forum on Patronage and Pluralism. 70 Pat Rabbitte, ‘Bringing Children Together’, www.labour.ie/campaigns/listing /20060202161752.html (accessed 14 December 2007). Though still available in 2007, the speech no longer appears in the list of Labour speeches on the party website (in June 2015). See also John Walshe, ‘Churches Out: Rabbitte’, Irish Independent (3 February 2006); Quinn, ‘Hands Off Our Schools’. 71 Ruairi Quinn, ‘Primary School System Has to Change with the Times’, Irish Independent (14 July 2009). 72 John Coolahan, Caroline Hussey and Fionnuala Kilfeather, The Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector:  Report of the Forum’s Advisory Group (April 2012), p. 3.

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73 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, p. 235 ff. 74 Quinn, ‘Primary School System Has to Change with the Times’. 75 Garret FitzGerald focused several times on the issue of schools in rural areas and small towns in particular in his column in the Irish Times and also in his ‘Concluding Commentary’, in James P. Mackey and Enda McDonagh (eds), Religion and Politics in Ireland at the Turn of the Millennium (Dublin: Columba Press, 2003), p. 264. 76 Following a cabinet reshuffle, it was Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe who was present at the conference (27 June 2008). 77 Agnès Maillot, ‘Les Nouveaux Républicains’, Études Irlandaises, 32:2 (2007), 62–82, at pp. 74–5. 78 Sinn Féin, Education and Childcare: Reaching our Full Potential: Sinn Féin Education and Childcare Platform 2007, p. 2. 79 Jonathan O’Brien TD (Sinn Féin education spokesperson), ‘SF Education Spokes‑ person Urges Parents to Participate in School Patronage Survey’ (6 February 2013), www.sinnfein.ie/contents/25613 (accessed 6 April 2015). 80 Ruth Coppinger, Councillor, Socialist Party, ‘End Religious Control of Schools’ (23 June 2009), www.socialistparty.ie/2009/06/end-religious-control-of-schools/ (accessed 6 April 2015); Socialist Party press release, ‘Archaic Ban on Pregnant Student’ (15 May 2012), www.socialistparty.ie/2012/05/archaic-ban-on-pregnant -student/ (accessed 6 April 2015). 81 Among the education policy objectives in the Workers’ Party’s manifesto in 2009:  ‘Support for the development of a secular state-funded system of education. The Bush and Blairite concept of “faith-based” schools is a recipe for segregation and sectarianism’ (www.workerspartyireland.net/policies.html, accessed 25 September 2009). 82 Dónal Ó Loingsigh, ‘Barriers to Intercultural Education’, in Catherine Furlong and Luke Monahan (eds), School Culture and Ethos:  Cracking the Code (Dublin:  Marino Institute of Education, 2000), pp. 225–31; Ó Loingsigh, ‘Intercultural Education and the School Ethos’, pp. 115–23. 83 Ó Loingsigh, ‘Intercultural Education and the School Ethos’, p. 122. 84 Intervention by Declan Kelleher from the floor at the questions and answers stage of the Conference on the Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs, June 2008. 85 INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School, pp.  95–6; also John Carr’s contribution in an Irish Times debate:  ‘Is Denominational Education Suitable for 21st Century Ireland?’ On the Yes side, John Murray (lecturer in Mater Dei Institute of Education), and on the No side, John Carr (General Secretary of the INTO), Irish Times (7 April 2008). 86 National University of Ireland, Maynooth, is a (secular) university created in 1997 as a result of the separation of the Arts, Science, Philosophy and Celtic Studies Faculties from the Catholic parent institution, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School, p. 97. Pádraig Hogan was also former President of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland. 87 INTO, Teaching Religion in the Primary School, p. 155. 88 Sean Cottrell, quoted in John Walshe, ‘School Principals Say Parents Must Take More Responsibility’, Irish Independent (30 January 2006). 89 Walshe, ‘School Principals’. 90 ASTI website, www.asti.ie/about-asti/head-office/head-office-staff/ (accessed 7 April 2015).

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91 Moira Leydon, ‘Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland Perspective’, in Catherine Furlong and Luke Monahan (eds), School Culture and Ethos: Cracking the Code (Dublin: Marino Institute of Education, 2000), pp. 239–42. 92 Billy Fitzpatrick, ‘School Culture and Ethos:  A  Teachers’ Union of Ireland Perspective’, in Catherine Furlong and Luke Monahan (eds), School Culture and Ethos:  Cracking the Code (Dublin:  Marino Institute of Education, 2000), pp. 233–8. 93 Appendix ‘(On) Audit of School Enrolment Policies in Respect of Second Level Schools, Submitted by the Teachers’ Union of Ireland’, in ‘Regulatory Framework for School Enrolment (Department of Education and Skills), Teachers’ Union of Ireland Response, 2011’, p.  11, available at www.tui.ie/education/ education-submissions.1503.html (accessed 7 April 2015). 94 Katherine Donnelly, ‘VEC’s Historic Primary School Bid’, Irish Independent (28 February 2006). 95 INTO, Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System, p. 11. 96 Áine Kerr, ‘VEC Role in Primary Schools Backed’, Irish Times (24 April 2006). 97 The Council received statutory recognition in the Education Act 1998 (www.npc.ie). 98 Thomas Kellaghan, Páid McGee, David Millar and Rachel Perkins, Views of the Irish Public on Education:  2004 Survey (Dublin:  Educational Research Centre, 2004), p. 34, Table 20. 99 Rosita Boland, ‘Church and Schools:  The Public Speak’, Irish Times (30 January 2010). 100 Eoin O’Mahony and the Council for Research and Development, Factors Determining School Choice:  Report on a Survey of the Attitudes of Parents of Children Attending Catholic Primary Schools in Ireland, compiled for the Education Commission of the Irish Bishops’ Conference (Maynooth:  Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, April 2008). 101 Catholic Bishops Press Release, ‘Bishops Launch Survey of Parents on Factors Determining School Choice’, 8 April 2008, available at www.catholicbishops. ie/2008/04/08/bishops-launch-survey-parents-factors-determining-school-choice/ (accessed 13 April 2015). 102 O’Mahony, Factors Determining School Choice, p. 22. 103 See Educate Together press releases since 2000, Educate Together website News Archive, www.educatetogether.ie. 104 Sean Flynn, ‘Bishop Queries Non-Believers’ Availing of Catholic Schools’, Irish Times (19 May 2000). 105 Sean Flynn, ‘Parents Seek Position of Catholic Church on School Entry’, Irish Times (20 May 2000). 106 INTO, Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System, p. 10. 107 Flynn, ‘Bishop Queries Non-Believers’ Availing of Catholic Schools’. 108 Quoted in Quinn, ‘Hands Off Our Schools’. 109 Brennan, ‘The Catholic School and Secularisation’, p. 12. 110 Sarah McDonald, ‘Minister Addresses Concerns on Divesting of Schools’, 11 February 2014, www.catholicireland.net/divesting-schools/ (accessed 15 April 2015). 111 Diarmuid Martin, ‘Changing Society, Changing Schools’, conference notes for the launch of a new Diploma in Education at Dublin City University, 22 September 2006, available at www.dcu.ie/news/2006/sep/archbishopspeech.pdf (accessed 12 March 2011).

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112 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Catholic Primary Schools. 113 Archbishop Martin, ‘Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs:  Speaking Notes’, Dublin, 27 June 2008, available at www.education.ie /servlet/blobservlet/Kilmainham_Conference_Index.htm (accessed 11 March 2009). 114 Fiona Gartland, ‘Talks on Catholic School Patronage Next Week’, Irish Times (6 November 2009). 115 ‘School Plan Abandoned Due to Lack of Premises’, Irish Times (20 September 1993). 116 ‘Education Minister Ruairi Quinn Says Disappointed Catholic Church Has Not Provided More Examples of Inclusive Education’, RTÉ Radio 1, News at One (22 April 2014). 117 Education Act 1998, Section 6. 118 For details of the complaint and for the response from RTÉ legal services, see Broadcasting Complaint Decisions, September 2007, available at www.bcc.ie/ decisions/sep_07_decisions.html (192/07, 22 June 2007). 119 Ruairi Quinn on RTÉ Radio 1, Today with Sean O’Rourke (12 March 2015). 120 John Walshe, ‘Church Demands Key Role in New Secondary Schools’, Irish Independent (9 September 2008). 121 Quotes from Leo O’Reilly in John Walshe, ‘Church Presses for New ‘Shared’ Role in Primary Schools’, Irish Independent (23 May 2009). 122 Michael Drumm, Chair of the Catholic Schools Partnership, presenting the Catholic Schools Partnership publication Catholic Primary Schools in a Changing Ireland: Sharing Good Practice on Inclusion of all Pupils on RTÉ Radio 1, Today with Sean O’Rourke (12 March 2015). 123 FIRE Report, 1973; quoted in O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 153. 124 Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, ‘Nun Urges Church to Give Up Running Schools’, Irish Times (19 September 2009). 125 Quoted by Seán Flynn, ‘Delay in Rolling out Schools Criticised’, Irish Times (18 September 2008). 126 Fintan O’Toole, ‘A Lesson for Primary Schools’, Irish Times (18 December 2007). 127 Quoted in ‘A New System of School Patronage’, Irish Times (18 June 2009). 128 Quoted in Michael O’Regan, ‘Labour Calls for Forum on School Patronage’, Irish Times (18 June 2009). 129 Eamon Gilmore, quoted in Michael O’Regan, ‘Ahern to Consider Setting Up National Education Forum’, Irish Times (28 November 2007); Brian Hayes, Fine Gael Education Spokesperson, interviewed by Seán Flynn, ‘Hayes: My First Task Is to Challenge Hanafin’s “Happy-Clappy” Spin’, Irish Times (6 November 2007). 130 Batt O’Keeffe’s speech at www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/Speeches/2008Speeches/SP08–06–27.html (accessed 20 April 2015). 131 Martin, ‘Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs’. 132 Dáil Éireann Debates, vol. 614 (15 February 2006). 133 Parliamentary Debates, Dáil Éireann, vol. 614, 15 February 2006. 134 Batt O’Keeffe’s speech at the Conference on the Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs, 27 June 2008. 135 Parliamentary Debates, Dáil Éireann, vol. 614, 15 February 2006. 136 Marie O’Halloran, ‘Hanafin Defends Policy on Schools’, Irish Times (6 September 2007). 137 Brian Hayes and Mary Hanafin, Dáil Éireann Debates, vol. 647 (19 February 2008).

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138 Quoted in Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, ‘Level of Immigration “Underestimated” ’, Irish Times (17 September 2007). 139 McGarry and McGee, ‘Carey Says State Must Take Control of Church-Run Schools’. 140 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, pp. 235–84. 141 See ‘Proposals Include Five Muslim Schools’, Irish Examiner (17 November 2007); ‘Approval Sought to Open Kerry’s First Islamic School in Tralee’, The Kerryman (21 November 2007). 142 Seán Flynn, ‘Department Delivers Scathing Report on Dublin Muslim School’, Irish Times (18 June 2009). 143 Hyland, ‘The Multi-denominational Experience’, pp. 89–114. 144 Tuohy, Denominational Education and Politics, p. 335. 145 Nathalie Rougier and Iseult Honohan, ‘Religion and Education in Ireland: Growing Diversity – or Losing Faith in the System?’, Comparative Education, 51:1 (2015), 71–86. 146 Daly, Religion, Law and the Irish State, p. 237.

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The diversification of school types now facilitated by the Irish State has been ostensibly encouraged by the Catholic Church as well as by other interest groups involved in education, including minority religious groups and, more paradoxically, Educate Together. What are the advantages and drawbacks of this ongoing development from the perspective of inclusion, civic and social equality? A majority of Irish schools belong to and/or are managed by different private groups with specific interests and orientations, which raises issues of respect for children’s rights and democratic legitimacy in the whole education system. The regular reassertion of the distinctive character of Catholic schools and of their mission towards the Catholic population logically leads to differences of treatment between children, depending on their religious backgrounds and in a number of instances (where there is pressure in numbers) to the exclusion of children of non-Catholic parents. It supposes that the State should ensure that these children may be catered for in alternative schools, which explains the Catholic Church’s positive response to the first Community Schools (though only in a limited number of areas) and its acceptance of the development of Educate Together schools, even to the point of being prepared to envisage the transfer of some Catholic schools to other patrons. As we have seen, however, this development is far from allowing full freedom of choice for parents (assuming such an approach to be a good thing in itself or even feasible in practice). In parallel, the main justification for the absence of any global reform plan on the part of the State remains based on the idea that existing Catholic schools are inclusive enough and that any remaining issue regarding discrimination and children’s rights may be either ignored or dealt with on an ad-hoc basis. A major aim of the discourse of the ‘inclusive school’ developed by both Church and State since the late 1990s has been to legitimise a perpetuation of the existing system. It has two main flaws: first, the very fact that the enrolment policies of a number of schools, especially in urban areas, are still discriminatory. Such practices remain allowed under the 1998 Education Act and as a result of exemptions to the principles of equality and non-discrimination

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in equality legislation as we will see. The School Admissions Bill introduced in April 2015, whose stated aim is to reduce schools’ ability to discriminate in their admissions policy, has not put this into question.1 The second issue behind this discourse is that of the actual level of inclusiveness (to be understood as absence of discrimination) and respect for children’s rights within the schools, a question we will deal with in Chapter 7. The first identifiable flaw is of a structural nature, and it is directly related to the segregated nature of the system. In the 2000s, successive Fianna Fáil governments did not see school segregation as a potential problem and refused to address related discriminatory practices and their social effects. They resorted to local arrangements, as in the case of the two Community Schools opened in 2008, or expected individual schools to deal with any problem that might arise. The Fine Gael–Labour coalition in power between 2011 and 2016 was more active in its attempts to reduce discrimination, as with the School Admissions Bill of April 2015, but it also failed to address the main issues arising from the denominational nature of the school system. Existing legislation and the dominant conception of rights in Irish education tend to favour a situation where religious and private interests remain considered paramount, largely ignoring the very notion of fundamental individual rights, as Alison Mawhinney and Eoin Daly have shown, as well as international advances in the area of children’s rights.2 Inclusion and equality in schools: preserving legal forms of discrimination In March 2004, the INTO and the Equality Authority jointly convened a national conference in Limerick on the theme of ‘the inclusive school’. Eilís Barry, legal adviser for the Equality Authority, presented the nine grounds for discrimination identified in the 2000 and 2004 Irish equality legislation (gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race and Traveller community grounds) and specified cases of exemption from Irish equality legislation within the school system.3 As she explained, the main restriction is a statutory one, since in the case of a potential contradiction between another piece of legislation and equality legislation, the other law automatically takes precedence: An overarching exemption in the Equal Status Act covers all aspects of the scope of the Equal Status Act 2000. If something is required by another law, for example the Education Acts or a court order, the provisions of the Equal Status Act cannot be construed as prohibiting it. However, if an organisation (such as a school) has any discretion about how it meets a legal requirement, then the way it does that must not breach the Equal Status Act.4

In other words, if an Act authorises a particular form of discrimination, the Equality Acts cannot be used to overturn it. This ‘overarching exemption’ then makes a whole series of infringements of the principle of equality possible.

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As was also explained in a 2005 publication by the Department of Education on the implementation of equality legislation in the school system, the Equal Status Acts forbid schools to have discriminatory enrolment policies ‘across the nine grounds’, but its Section 7 allows for discrimination on the basis of religion (or considers that the grounds for discrimination do not apply) when ‘the objective of the school is to provide education in an environment which promotes certain religious values’.5 It states that such a school can give preference to persons of a particular denomination over others and that it can refuse to admit a student of another denomination provided it can prove such a ‘refusal is essential to maintain the ethos of the school’.6 The superior rights of religious-school patrons are explicitly considered as legitimate grounds to limit equality of access and treatment for children in schools. With regard to school enrolment policy, the 1998 Education Act specifies: the board shall […] ensure that as regards that policy principles of equality and the right of parents to send their children to a school of the parents’ choice are respected and such directions as may be made from time to time by the Minister, having regard to the characteristic spirit of the school and the constitutional rights of all persons concerned, are complied with.7

The convoluted character of this long sentence is indicative of the lack of clarity of the State position, with a series of caveats to the principle of equality mentioned at the start. The phrasing also lends itself to different interpretations about the notion of equality: does it refer here only to the idea of equality between children or also to equality between corporate bodies or patrons? What kind of directive might the Education Minister issue ‘from time to time’? What is the hierarchy of constitutional rights? Section 6(e) of the 1998 Education Act even more clearly subordinates the rights of parents both to those of patrons and to the State’s budgetary choices: the State is meant ‘to promote the right of parents to send their children to a school of the parents’ choice having regard to the rights of patrons and the effective and efficient use of resources’.8 The precarious balance favoured in this Act and the unequal weight afforded to parental rights, to the rights of patrons and to the ‘efficient use of resources’ inevitably tend to obscure or ignore the first principles enounced in the section, i.e. the constitutional rights of children (section 6[a]‌) and the ‘principle of equality’. Denominational schools have retained the right to refuse children if they estimate that their admission would dilute or endanger their ethos. The legal specifications on this exemption to equality legislation also tend to confirm that the term ‘ethos’, though theoretically meant to apply to all types of schools, remains understood mainly with relation to the religious character of denominational schools (see Chapter 7). For a school to ‘prove’ that the admission of such and such a child would weaken their ethos remains highly problematic, as Eilís Barry underlined in 2004 when she mentioned the case of a non-Catholic child who had been

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refused admission in a Catholic school despite the fact that his sibling already attended that school.9 The Equality Authority’s legal adviser also mentioned cases of Traveller children and children with special needs being refused admission in some secondary schools, as well as instances when small numbers of children from families had been refused admission in a large school managed by another denomination than that of their family. The formulation here implied that given the size of the school such refusals could not be justified on the grounds of the school ethos being potentially undermined by the presence of these children. In the same intervention, Eilís Barry remarked that the Equality Authority was receiving an increasing number of requests relating to the obligation of the State as ‘service provider’ to offer the possibility of a non-denominational or secular education. The series of serious exemptions to Irish equality legislation are bound to limit the meaning and scope of the notion of inclusiveness in schools. In the same way and for similar reasons, the 1998 Employment Equality Act and then the 2000 and 2004 Equal Status Acts made all discrimination illegal in recruitment and work, except for institutions managed by religious, such as hospitals and schools, and this even when such institutions are state-funded:10 37. (1) A religious, educational or medical institution which is under the direction or control of a body established for religious purposes or whose objectives include the provision of services in an environment which promotes certain religious values shall not be taken to discriminate against a person for the purposes of this Part or Part II if – (a) it gives more favourable treatment, on the religion ground, to an employee or a prospective employee over that person where it is reasonable to do so in order to maintain the religious ethos of the institution, or (b) it takes action which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee or a prospective employee from undermining the religious ethos of the institution.11

The formulation obviously includes denominational schools, regardless of whether they belong to the Church (since there are now cases where the buildings belong to the State but the school has a religious ethos as a result of the signing of a deed of trust between a religious body and the State). Discrimination in employment along religious, but also potentially moral, lines (with the mention of ‘certain religious values’) has remained legally possible in the Irish State until now. A similar clause was introduced in the 1998 Act (section 12) in the area of training. It was on this legal basis that the Church of Ireland College of Education obtained the explicit right to select its students on the basis of their religious affiliation in 2000, ensuring that its mode of recruitment would be protected against any potential legal recourse in future.12 The teacher organisations have been campaigning against Clause 37 for years to no avail until now.13 This clause would have been in breach of European equality legislation  – specifically European Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000, whose aim was to provide a general framework for equal treatment in employment14 – had it not been for an amendment to this

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legislation that was obtained through the efforts of the Irish government. In October 2000, a delegation of representatives from the four main Christian Churches in Ireland (Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist) met with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to ask him to push for this amendment, which they saw as essential to preserve the religious character of their schools and denominational instruction generally in Ireland, both north and south. In the end, the European directive also contained a clause related to the situation in Northern Ireland, which explicitly allowed the recruitment of teachers on the basis of religious criteria.15 According to the spokesman for the Irish bishops, the religious representatives had the satisfaction of finding that they were ‘pushing an open door’ in discussing with the Taoiseach their ‘shared concerns about safeguarding denominational education North and South’.16 Irish teacher organisations have condemned both the amendment and the role the Irish government played in obtaining it: such exemptions to equality legislation at both Irish and European levels allow denominational schools, and the religious groups that control them, to maintain a discriminatory policy towards teachers paid by the State on the basis of their personal opinions or individual religious practices.17 A hierarchy of rights: the group(s) before the individual When, in 2007, the media asked Education Minister Mary Hanafin for a reaction to the UN committee reports that warned the Irish government against discriminatory practices in the school system, she chose to insist on the fact that the government upheld a principle of equality between patrons, ‘whether they were non-denominational, denominational, interdenominational or multi-denominational’.18 As we have seen, this was a matter of debate, but, more importantly here, it meant that Hanafin chose to stress the notion of equality between patrons whereas the UN committees had focused on equal treatment and equal rights for children. This outlook has been a common one in recent Irish political history as well as in the public debate on these issues. In this top-down rather than bottom-up view, schools are seen as legitimately controlled by private organisations defined according to their religious status or orientation (or lack thereof) rather than as educational establishments catering for the education of children as a public service. At the same time, the policy of ‘limited diversification’ of the school system may be described as a kind of negative alternative: this policy clearly represents a new limit to the rights of patrons, but on the other hand it does not directly tackle the issue of human rights and individual equality in the existing system. With the change in government in 2011, there has been an apparent shift of priorities from the rights of patrons to the rights of parents since the notion of parental choice is now presented as paramount in political discourse, but the patronage system and its consequences have not been put into question and, to all intents and purposes, school patrons have retained superior rights in ‘their’ schools until now.

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In this context, there is a double issue of hierarchy of rights and of the nature of these rights, which has been extensively analysed by Eoin Daly.19 Focusing on Irish jurisprudence, Daly outlines that respect for the rights of patrons has taken precedence over respect for fundamental individual rights. He also questions the notion of parental choice as a right, showing that it is not treated as an individual right in the Irish context but as a rationale for the maintenance or recognition of group rights.20 Because of the practical impossibility of equal school choice for all parents (developed below), the ‘doctrine of “choice” ’ inevitably expresses ‘an imperative of aggregate preference-optimisation, with “choice” claims essentially summed across groups of citizens’.21 Daly shows that such ‘preference-optimisation’ has been given precedence in Irish policy over freedom of conscience and religion as a human right. When discussing the controversy over cuts to special state funding of Protestant secondary schools in 2009, drawing from John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, Daly explains that the ‘ad hoc framework of accommodation’ allowed by the patronage model ‘contradicts the democratic imperative that fundamental rights, including religious and educational freedom, be put beyond the “calculus of social interests” ’.22 At times, religious authorities have chosen to assert their right of private property over their schools or their educational duty as religious institutions as legitimising their continued control over a significant proportion of the Irish school system, but in Ireland their main argument has been based on the right of parents of a particular religious affiliation to have their child educated in a school of that same religious affiliation. The 2007 general policy document of the Irish Bishops’ Conference on Catholic primary schools again adopted this stance as is visible throughout the publication.23 In such a stance there is the assumption that the denominational nature of a school is necessarily a determining factor for parental choice, which is very much a matter of debate judging both from the results of the 2004 survey carried out by the Educational Research Centre (‘Your Education System’) and from the enquiry that was commissioned by the Bishops’ Conference in 2006/8.24 In the latter survey, a majority (53 per cent) of parents of children attending a Catholic school had rejected the proposition – that Catholic school managers would often take up – according to which the religious, moral and spiritual education of their child was the most important aspect of their primary schooling. Far from any kind of religious or even moral reason, the vast majority identified the quality of the education received in preparation for secondary-level schooling as a determining factor in their choice of primary school.25 For Catholic managers to present themselves as natural spokespersons for Catholic parents and as the ‘bearers’ of parents’ educational rights as it were was a traditional position of the Catholic Church in Ireland, but the long-time resistance of the Church to any increased parental involvement on school boards points to a different reality, that of a Church which was in fact reluctant to give parents further control over their children’s schools in the Irish education system.26 Such a stance tends to undermine the general religious discourse on the importance of upholding parental rights, and we have already

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seen that the Churches have not hesitated to overrule the wishes expressed by a majority of parents where religious instruction was concerned, as was the case in the Dunboyne controversy in 2002 (see Chapter 4). The tendency of religious patrons to put in parallel, or even to assimilate, their own right to preserve and promote their particular ethos in ‘their’ schools (or the schools of the ‘Catholic community’) to the right of parents to enrol their child in a school of their choice has served to mask the potential discrepancy between the two as well as the inherent complexity behind parents’ educational choices. Moreover, the insistence of the Irish Catholic hierarchy on the right of Catholic parents to have access to a Catholic school for their children obviously fails to solve the issue of the right of non-Catholic parents who find themselves having to ask for their child to be enrolled in a Catholic school in the absence of any alternative in many cases. As Anne Lodge and Kathleen Lynch have noted, while the main Christian Churches have been able to assert their influence in education through long-standing structures and financial backing, it has been much more difficult for more recent or less established religious minorities to envisage setting up schools, and this is all the more true of people (whether affiliated to a religion or not) who might have wanted different schools but could not rely on a group structure to start with.27 Lynch and Lodge also point out that certain religious minorities, along with non-believers, do not have the hierarchical management and control structures that would lend themselves to interaction with hierarchically organised state institutions, while the management models of Irish schools are directly inspired from the Churches’ control systems, with the concept of patron, the contribution of the local parish, etc.28 On the other hand, while a relatively wide consensus seems to exist within Irish society as to the primacy of parental rights and choices in theory, the idea that respect for the cultural and religious rights of parents in educational matters should entail access to separate schools reflecting their culture and/or their religious opinions is far from being as widely accepted. The survey carried out in 2004 by the Educational Research Centre showed that Irish public opinion was very much of two minds about this, with 44.8 per cent of respondents in favour of this idea and 44.7 per cent against it.29 This has not prevented some interest groups from calling upon this particular interpretation of parental rights in order to demand ‘parity’ of treatment with other groups from the State in matters of official recognition and funding. In an address to the UN Committee for Cultural, Social and Economic Rights in 2002, the National Congress of Catholic Schools Parents Associations defended their right of access to a Catholic education for their children as a cultural right: they contended that the government put into question their right to a Catholic education by underfunding Catholic schools by comparison with the schools of Irish religious minorities.30 In 2009, parents whose children attended Protestant secondary schools protested publicly against the government cuts in education on the grounds that they affected these schools disproportionately. They insisted on their right to an education that would reflect their values,

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condemning what they considered as the undue advantage given to Catholic secondary schools in the 2009 state budget.31 There has been a recurrent debate in Ireland about official policy towards different types of schools, with the government being regularly accused of operating to the detriment of minority groups and individuals, be they itinerant or Educate Together schools for example or be they parents: Anne Lodge remarks that the system of financial support set up for secondary-level Protestant schools from the 1960s onwards (when secondary schooling became free) – it was meant to enable attendance by children of Protestant parents regardless of family income thanks to transport and boarding facilities – had never been extended to other minorities.32 Lodge also gives the example of the many non-Catholic immigrants and refugees whose socio-economic background was already disadvantaged (not to mention asylum-seekers depending on direct provision, with no financial autonomy whatsoever) and who had no means to send their children to a school that might have corresponded to their religious beliefs. In many ways, the Irish government was bound to come under attack from different quarters, given its untenable stance as an ‘impartial’ referee between different patrons, striving to create a system with a variety of schools catering for as many groups. On the basis of the Department of Education’s own position, demands have logically been made on it to ensure ‘equality of treatment’ between different denominational (and other) schools, in the name of parents’ cultural and religious rights. The issue of unequal treatment of different types of schools on the part of government has also tended to mask that of inequality of treatment between children as well as that of pluralism within schools. In this hierarchy of rights, until now the Irish State has appeared as a guarantor of the cultural and religious rights of different groups (as opposed to fundamental individual human rights), whether the Churches themselves in the first instance or more recently groups of parents. Even the more recent stance encouraging parental surveys and potential transfers of schools from one patron to another is based on the notion of ‘majority rule’, with the emerging majority group being given precedence over all other parents in the choice of patron. It is only in a second instance that the State sees itself as a guarantor of the individual rights of parents, once the rights of pre-identified groups have been preserved, and within the financial limits of ‘available resources’. In such a context, the parental ‘right to choose’ can only be exercised with significant differences between parents, depending both on their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and on their ability to organise themselves collectively. This was forcefully brought home to the parents who tried to set up the first alternatives to denominational schools in the Irish Republic during the 1970s (the schools were then gathered under the common umbrella of the Educate Together association in 1983). Parents had to set themselves up as a private company, organise the whole school-creation process, find temporary buildings to start with and contribute in a significant way to the necessary funding

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(the parents who initiated the Dalkey School Project in 1975 had to raise IR£150,000 at the time).33 The fact that institutional recognition may only be attributed to already constituted groups is also a problem from a religious perspective. The rapidly increasing census categories of people who either describe themselves as having ‘No Religion’ or decline to specify (‘Not stated’) only come together as a result of the census: in other words, they do not form predefined or constituted groups in society. In spite of this, the Irish Humanist Association has tried to gain institutional recognition of the ‘Non-Religious’ as a community, precisely because, given the outlook of the State and the dominant vision of society as an aggregate of social groups rather than a community of citizens, it seemed to be the only avenue open to them in order to fight against ongoing and potential discriminatory practices against non-religious people.34 Some reactions to the Irish Humanist Association’s critical analysis of the Irish education system as discriminatory show that part of the population at least shares the government vision and is used to viewing the school system from this perspective: two letters published in the Irish Times in 2009, for example, countered the Humanist Association’s critical assessment by insisting that the onus should be on parents who wished for alternatives to denominational schooling to set those schools up themselves in parallel to the existing system.35 A hierarchy of rights: adults before children – ignoring children’s rights At the end of the day, considering the dominant outlook in the Irish State, the issue of the rights of children, if it was considered at all, was bound to be subordinated to the drive to accommodate the respective interests of constituted adult groups within the system. Schools are widely perceived as belonging legitimately to different social groups, whether religious institutions or groups of parents more recently, and not as existing to serve the interests of children, in the perspective of the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as in that of a truly child-centred education. From a children’s rights viewpoint, the State’s first priority should be to guarantee the human and civil rights of children in the educational context of state-funded schools, and all decisions regarding both structure and contents should respect and uphold these rights. As Dympna Devine has remarked, the fact that schools are built, managed and generally shaped by adults does not exonerate adults from respecting the rights of children attending them.36 An Irish sociologist of education, Devine puts into question the dominant ‘paternalistic’ trend, centred on adults and on the socialisation of children into the value system and the cultural system of the adult world, in decision-making processes related to schools. A close reading of the general guidelines of the 1999 primary-school curriculum also makes it clear that the main aims of primary education in the Irish State are defined in terms of (perceived) needs rather than in terms of rights.

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The 2006 report of the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child on the Republic of Ireland’s progress in implementing the International Convention of 1989 noted that the Convention had not been incorporated into national legislation, contrary to its prior recommendations. It insisted on the necessity of adopting an approach that would be founded on children’s rights in policy-making as well as in practice. These observations were in line with comments made by the Irish Children’s Rights Alliance in their own report to the committee. The Alliance noted the government’s particular reluctance to act in this field, attributing it largely to a fear of new financial obligations.37 In an introductory speech at a conference on the ethos of Educate Together schools that he made as representative for the Alliance in 2003, Ray Dooley explained that the projected European Constitutional Treaty planned to include the ‘protection of the rights of the child’ among the ‘Objectives of the Union’ (Article 3), which amounted to a historic step forward for defenders of children’s rights at a European level. He noted, however, that the Irish government had gone as far as tabling an amendment that would have replaced the proposed mention with the simple mention of the ‘universality and indivisibility of human rights’, concepts that had long been part of European legislation (Article 3 of the Lisbon Treaty did include ‘the protection of the rights of the child’ in the end).38 At the time, the Alliance was calling for a referendum to amend the Irish Constitution with an explicit recognition of children’s rights, in order to put an end to the constitutional subordination of the rights of children to those of their parents (a subordination whose problematic nature had been underlined notably by Catherine McGuinness, a future member of the Irish Supreme Court, in the course of an inquest on a case of incest In Kilkenny in 1993).39 To the Alliance, such an amendment was essential in order to open the way to the development of an adequate legislative framework enforcing those rights in the Republic.40 The referendum on children’s rights that eventually took place in 2012 was also pushed forward by the child-abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church in the late 2000s. As we saw in Chapter 1, the resulting amendment did not touch upon issues of freedom of conscience and religion however. As we have seen, three different UN committees have advocated amending the existing legislation in order to eliminate all discrimination in the schools’ admission policies. The proposed School Admissions Bill of April 2015 goes some way towards achieving this goal, but it does not address all problematic areas, only skirting around the issue of religious discrimination. Atheist Ireland has even accused the Bill of further institutionalising religious discrimination.41 The Bill expects schools to include a statement that they shall not discriminate on the basis of religion, but at the same time they remain legally entitled to do so in their admissions policies, and it fails to address the practical implications of the children’s right to opt out of religious education. In its reaction to the Bill in November 2015, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission specifically recommended that existing legislation should be

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amended ‘to give effect to the principle that no child should be given preferential access to a publicly funded school on the basis of their religion’.42 There is now explicit recognition at international level of children’s freedom of thought, conscience and religion as a fundamental human right. The Preamble to the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was signed by the Irish government in 1992, states that ‘the United Nations has, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenants on human rights, proclaimed and agreed that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’. Article 14 of the International Convention specifies: 1  States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. 2  States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.

Article 30 of the Convention expresses the right of a child belonging to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority, ‘in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practice his or her own religion or to use his or her own language’. It introduces a potential contradiction with Article 14 by presupposing that the religion of the adult minority group will necessarily be that of the child, a contradiction that can only be resolved in particular cases through giving precedence to each individual child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as spelled out in Article 14. It was on the basis of the corresponding Article 9 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 that the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy for allowing the displaying of crucifixes in the classrooms of state-funded schools in the Lautsi v. Italy case in 2009. In a move that also revealed a different interpretation of parental rights to the one that generally prevails in Ireland (group versus individual rights), the judges contended that this disposition was contrary both to the right of parents to educate their children according to their convictions and to the rights of children to freedom of religion.43 Referring explicitly to Article 9 of the European Convention, they implicitly defined the status of the child as a human being on a par with adults, a relatively recent conception that has been legitimised by the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child. They also drew a clear distinction between the private and public spheres and between the role of the State and that of parents in the education of children, in the way they interpreted Article 2 of the additional Protocol to the 1952 European Convention on the ‘right to education’, which stipulates that, ‘in the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such

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education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions’. The Registrar summarised the decision of the European Court in the following manner: The State was to refrain from imposing beliefs in premises where individuals were dependent on it. In particular, it was required to observe confessional neutrality in the context of public education, where attending classes was compulsory irrespective of religion, and where the aim should be to foster critical thinking in pupils. The Court was unable to grasp how the display, in classrooms in State schools, of a symbol that could reasonably be associated with Catholicism (the majority religion in Italy) could serve the educational pluralism that was essential to the preservation of a “democratic society” as conceived by the Convention, a pluralism that was recognised by the Italian Constitutional Court. The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities, and especially in classrooms, thus restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions, and the right of children to believe or not to believe.44

The Italian government appealed the judgement, and the case was then referred to a Grand Chamber, which reconsidered this first judgement in a majority decision. Among other arguments, the Italian government made the highly dubious claim that the crucifix could be considered as a cultural symbol rather than a religious one. The Grand Chamber reversed the previous decision on the basis of an absence of consensus between European countries (several other European countries had joined Italy’s appeal and were putting collective pressure on the European Court) and using the idea of a margin of appreciation in individual countries but not strictly on the basis of international rights. In this sense, there was a definite political, rather than strictly legal, dimension to their decision: the two dissenting judges disagreed with the majority’s refusal to give a ruling on the issue on the basis of international human-rights standards. They noted that, in similar cases, every single European supreme or constitutional court had issued similar decisions to that of the European Court in 2009, giving precedence to the principle of State denominational neutrality.45 In the Irish context, the issue is further compounded by the fact that until now the State has chosen to continue delegating responsibility for education to private patrons. As in the past, the 1998 Education Act allows parents to withdraw their children from religious instruction, at least in theory, but the right to freedom of conscience and religion of children and young people is actively denied, since only a student having reached the age of eighteen could take such a decision by himself.46 There was a brief mention of Article 14 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Irish Children’s Rights Alliance’s report to the UN committee in 2006, which also noted that young people could not exercise their own right to freedom of conscience and religion in the Irish State.47 By way of an introduction to the report’s section on civil rights and freedoms, the authors highlighted the following quotation: ‘ “Children in Ireland may be given more freedom than those in some countries, but things such as freedom to make our own

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decisions in life or to decide our religion are still made for us…” (Colm, age 16, Dublin).’48 This is only an anecdotal example of the views of young people, of course, and there have been few surveys on the experiences and opinions of young people as regards religion in school.49 While teenagers may be expected to be able to exercise their right to freedom of conscience and religion independently, the protection of the rights of younger children in this regard may only come from adults. In his 1985 essay on the relationship between Church and State, Desmond M. Clarke had already put forward the issue of respect for children’s rights in the educational context of the Republic of Ireland.50 Clarke made the distinction between the rights of parents and those of children and remarked that the Irish Constitution acknowledged fundamental rights to parents in the education of their children but was ‘not explicit on how these rights may have to yield to the rights of children’.51 Clarke carried out a study of American case law on the potential conflict between the rights of parents and those of children and considered its application in an Irish context. He stressed the contradiction between granting children constitutional rights and then putting in place or preserving an education system in which one of their most fundamental rights is systematically ignored, concluding, the constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and religious freedom of the Irish Constitution should protect Irish children from the probable effects of a system of education which leaves them subject, with the parents’ consent in most cases, to the systematic indoctrination of the Churches.52

In order to highlight the particular importance of protecting children’s rights in primary schools, Clarke focused especially on an American case from 1971 that prompted the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court to note that religious indoctrination is more effective in inverse proportion to the age and maturity of the subject: Hence a greater care needs to be exercised in the case of young citizens than in the case of the more mature. It seems to follow that any systematic religious indoctrination in primary schools is unconstitutional, on this ground alone, whereas a critical exposure to different religious traditions at secondary school level would be less obviously a threat to the rights of the child.53

As Clarke also contended, by virtue of the principle of neutrality with respect to religious belief that the State should uphold according to the Constitution, the State ‘should not discriminate in any way between citizens on the basis of their religious beliefs or their lack of such beliefs’, which implies that the civil authorities should be strictly neutral with respect to religious teaching and that they should not finance any religious indoctrination and instead actively defend the liberties of young citizens.54 Desmond Clarke also efficiently undermined the ‘majority’ argument that still appears to be at the basis of Irish government policy in this area, by quoting

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this time from the Barnette decision (an American case from 1943) in order to stress the specific nature of fundamental rights in a democracy: The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to … freedom of worship … and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election.55

As Clarke noted, what is at stake is not the number of citizens involved but whether or not their constitutional rights should be upheld rather than ignored in practice in the educational policies of the State.56 In an article published in Irish Educational Studies in 1989, Margaret A.  Libreri raised the same issue, confronting the question of parents’ right to choose with that of the rights of the child in a denominational education system from the perspective of respect for religious freedom.57 Her main argument, which concurred with Clarke’s analysis, rested on the idea that, if their rights as individuals were to be taken seriously, children should not be defined, or predefined, by the religion of their parents and that one of the roles of the State as a guarantor of these rights should be to preserve, and develop as much as possible, their freedom of thought and conscience. Unsurprisingly, the general policy document issued by the Irish Catholic bishops in 2007 by contrast completely ignored children’s rights, whereas it quoted extracts from international and European texts on human rights from the 1940s and 1960s. Until now, the education policy discourses of both State and Church have largely ignored the practical implications of the rights of the child as far as the place of religion in schools is concerned. While some Irish academics, starting with political philosopher Desmond M. Clarke, have pointed to children’s rights as crucial in any debate on religion in schools, other authors have focused on what they have described as the ‘democratic deficit’ of schools (we will go further into this in the following chapter), without taking up this particular issue, despite its close relation to the subject at hand. Jim Deegan and Kathleen Lynch do note, for instance, that considering children only as an extension of their parents is a problematic trend.58 But most analyses by Irish researchers in education have centred rather on religious diversity or difference in schools, with the general assumption that children necessarily belong to predetermined religious groups. In this vein, in the conclusive chapter to their work on equality and diversity in Irish primary schools, Dympna Devine, Anne Lodge and Jim Deegan chose to focus on what one might call ‘group democracy’: drawing on the writings of American philosopher and humanist John Dewey on democracy and education in 1916,59 they write that their ‘vision of democracy in schools involves the full recognition and inclusion of all diverse groups in society’.60 In another work, Anne Lodge refers to an article by Siobhán Mullally that mentions the tension between the right of each individual to freedom of religion

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and the right of denominational schools to maintain their ethos, but in this instance the right of individuals mentioned in the article is specifically that of school employees, and the implications of the democratic principle of respect for the rights of the child as a person in the area of religion are not expanded on.61 Lodge remains extremely cautious as to the best way of resolving the tension, merely pointing out that ‘there are questions that remain to be resolved regarding the balancing of these rights’.62 This vagueness encourages a problematic trend, from the legitimate demand to ensure respect for the diverse religious opinions of parents as citizens to an implicit assimilation of the parents’ opinions to those of their children. By contrast, this trend brings to mind the cover of Education for Democracy (first published in Britain in 1970), which represented a child holding a placard with the sentence ‘Don’t label me.’63 Segregation and ‘external’ discrimination: communities versus community As Dympna Devine remarks in her book on ‘how childhood is structured in the primary school’, schools as social institutions play a central role in children’s own construction of their perception of themselves, their social world and their place in that world.64 Each child is inscribed within a complex socio-cultural context, and the rules that direct the activities of the school reflect a number of social norms and values. We will not dwell on the works of international specialists such as Pierre Bourdieu and others whose analyses have demonstrated the crucial role of social reproduction played by schools (Dympna Devine refers to these notably when examining power issues between adults and children in the school). From this perspective, there is a twofold question: that of the nature of the relationship between each school and its local environment and that of the link between the shape of the education system and the society as a whole. As far as the nature of the relationship between each school and its local environment is concerned, in the Irish context both the teaching organisations and the Churches insist on the importance of the link between school and community, but the term ‘community’ does not necessarily mean the same thing depending on who is referring to it. Up to the 1990s, in the traditional organisation of Irish society, the words ‘parish’ and ‘community’ were all but interchangeable, with the Church, the parish hall and the school representing the main ‘communal’ centres.65 Irish Catholic schools are not normally called ‘parish schools’, but their ‘natural’ catchment area for admissions is the parish, even if in theory they can also enrol children from outside it. Hence the problematic nature of assertions such as those made by Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin in his speech ‘Changing Society, Changing Schools’, delivered in Dublin City University in 2006, when he claimed, ‘One of the strong characteristics of the Irish educational model, especially in primary schools, is that it is community-rooted. The school belongs within a community and is managed from within the community.’66 Although this remains implicit here, the traditional reference community

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for the Irish educational model has been the parish community, whereas with the social developments of the past thirty years it has become more and more obvious that the local, practising Catholic community that the local Catholic school was meant to serve and the population now living in the vicinity of that state-funded ‘national’ school cover quite different realities. When a teaching organisation such as the INTO emphasises the importance of the link between the primary school and the local community and the necessity of making it possible for parents to send their children to their local school, the word ‘community’ then refers to the whole of the population living in a particular area and to local social links that would generally be the fruit of geographic proximity (in the sense of a ‘community of place’) and not necessarily of belonging to the same Church, though one would not preclude the other. Such different understandings of the word ‘community’ point to distinct assumptions of society and identity, as was also pointed out in the letter to the Irish Times already quoted in Chapter 2 in which readers were called upon to question the underlying meaning behind phrases such as ‘our [Irish] community, our laws and or cultural traditions’, with their potentially exclusive overtones. The complexity of the notion of community has been highlighted internationally, in works on ‘liberal’ or ‘communitarian’ discourses,67 on the idea of ‘multiculturalism’68 and on the multifaceted emotional, social, political, linguistic, cultural and/or religious ties between the members of a given society.69 In an education system that has long been dominated by religious interests, religious ‘communities’ have partly taken precedence over the concept of ‘local community’ in the allocation of children to schools, with negative consequences not only for local social links but also in terms of environmental impact: there are significant financial and environmental costs associated with a particularly complex school transport system ferrying children to and from schools that may not be locally situated, especially in urban areas where a measure of school choice might be possible.70 The main focus here is on denominational schools because they constitute the vast majority of Irish schools, but in this context all school types that define themselves in contrast or comparison with others, facing parents with a choice to be made in the market of education, contribute to breaking the potential link between local community and school community. At a national level, there is the corresponding issue of what the ‘national community’ is made of, whether a community of citizens prepared to ‘live together’ (in the spirit of Ernest Renan’s writings) or a mosaic of distinct groups, and of the way(s) in which the educational institution should or could reflect one or the other of these two different visions. This issue arises most forcefully in the context of a divided society, as in Northern Ireland, but relations of power and domination between ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ or between different social groups exist in all human societies and come across differently within educational structures depending on each particular country.71 From this perspective, as evoked in Chapter 2, the Republic of Ireland seems to be at a crossroads, heavily influenced as it is by a ‘British’ outlook that has long privileged the vision of a society made up of distinct groups but also marked

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by a republican conception that may have been gaining some ground over the past few years. As Denis O’Sullivan notes, the manner in which these assertions of religious/secular and linguistic differences take the form of the structural differentiation of pupils in different school types has been interpreted as threatening modernity’s ideal of a common citizenry. In support of this, schools in which all sectors of society, religious/secular, ethnic, social, etc., learn and interact in mutual recognition and respect according to shared civic values are seen as microcosms of democratic society and as a lived preparation for it.72

Discriminatory admission policies: the religious criterion As far as primary schools’ admission policies are concerned, in cases where the Catholic school is the only school in a small rural area, it is bound to serve the function of a local community school and accept all children regardless of their parents’ religious affiliations or opinions (keeping in mind however that a nearby Protestant school may cater for children whose parents belong to the Protestant Churches, with special financial help from the State to facilitate this). Everywhere else, and especially in expanding urban areas, in most primary schools except for the Educate Together schools and the new Community Schools, enrolment will routinely take place by order of preference (in a Church of Ireland school, first the children of Anglican parents, then those of ‘other Protestant’ parents, then perhaps children from mixed – Catholic/Protestant – marriages and then ‘other Christian’ parents, etc.73). In this context, some interesting variations may be noted, with the online questionnaire of Stratford College in Dublin (a Jewish school), for example, distinguishing between the religious affiliation of each of the parents and that of their child.74 In Catholic schools, discrimination at enrolment has been facilitated by the inclusion of questions on the baptism date of their child or/and on their own religious affiliation in the forms parents have to fill. Priority to Catholic children (or children of Catholic parents) was made explicit in the admission policies of a number of schools in the course of the 2000s, especially in the greater Dublin area, with schools starting to require parents to provide a baptism certificate (a practice that was evidenced in September 2007 at the time of the widely publicised controversy around the exclusion of immigrant children from a particular Catholic school in the north of Dublin – more on this later).75 Admission policies may vary considerably from one school to the next within the Catholic sector, however, for reasons already mentioned, depending on the geographic situation of a school or on its reputation, but also depending on the school head and board. As researchers for the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin have shown in a 2009 study on children of immigrants and ‘diversity’ in Irish schools that included a section on admission policies, there are no set general rules, which is obviously problematic from the perspective of equal access for children.76 The results of case studies on particular primary schools also show that, depending on the school, the ‘Catholic ethos’ may be

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interpreted in wildly different ways, as necessarily ‘inclusive’, that is as meaning that all children should be accepted regardless of their origins or religion out of a sense of Christian duty, or as potentially exclusive, i.e. existing to cater for Catholic children first and foremost. A quick look at the official websites of Catholic secondary schools is enough to confirm this contradictory trend. On some of these, the school authorities clearly explain that they give priority to Catholic children and expect all parents to support the school ethos. The admissions policy document of Dublin’s Dominican College, a Catholic secondary school for girls, states: The ethos of the school is Catholic and Dominican. While the school welcomes those of other faiths, it is entitled to give priority to Catholic children in accordance with sec 7(3) of the Equal Status Act 2000. The Board of Management requires the parents/guardians of prospective students to agree in writing that they will support the ethos of the school.77

On the home page, the mission statement reads, ‘We strive to realise each individual’s full potential in a Catholic environment. Our Roman Catholic traditional motto – Veritas – imbues all aspects of school life.’ In 2006, the College was even more straightforward in its deliberately exclusive stance, referring implicitly to the 1998 Education Act, but the overall outlook has remained the same: ‘The ethos of the school is Catholic and Dominican, therefore the Board of Management reserves the right to exclude prospective students whose presence would be perceived to dilute or be damaging to that ethos.’78 In the new policy document, asking parents to agree in writing to support the school’s Catholic ethos as a prerequisite to their child’s enrolment is another way to discourage potential applications from non-Catholics to start with. All Catholic secondary-level schools do not adhere to the same policy – or the same definition of the Catholic ethos – however, some of them explaining on the contrary that welcoming pupils of all religions and none is in accordance with their Christian ethos, as was the case for Ardscoil La Salle in Dublin in 2006:  ‘A Christian school in the tradition of St Jean-Baptiste De La Salle, patron saint of teachers, we welcome pupils of all religions and none, treating everyone’s beliefs with respect.’79 Although this statement has since disappeared from the website, the admissions policy document, by contrast with that of Dominican College, states that, Enrolment is open to both boys and girls on an equal basis, regardless of social background, financial status, religion, race, nationality, gender, educational standard or physical challenges. All, however, is subject to the existing availability of appropriate resources in the school.80

Ardscoil La Salle upholds a particular ‘characteristic spirit’ and ‘the religious and educational philosophy of the De La Salle Brothers’ and expects first-year applicants to ‘be willing to accept the school ethos’, which is, however, one step down from Dominican College’s expectation for parents and pupils to actively ‘support the school ethos’.

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Beyond these significant differences within the Catholic sector, the religious criterion is part of the admissions policy of a high number of Irish schools. Such discriminatory policies put into question the State’s discourse of inclusiveness as well as that of the Catholic Church, as they are bound to be factors of exclusion and segregation between children. In the course of the conference organised by the INTO on intercultural education in 2004, several teachers denounced the exclusive nature of the admissions policies of religious schools. A statement by Máire Masterson, then President of the INTO’s education committee, provided a good illustration of the problem, confirming that discriminatory practices had been officialised in a number of Catholic schools: As teachers we need to look in our own back yards as to what constrains our practice and our efforts to be inclusive as primary school teachers – for example, next year I am faced with an enrolment policy which will exclude non-Catholic children from my school even though they are within walking distance of the school.81

In the current Irish context, and given that the State made it possible for them do so from a legal perspective, it was to be expected that Catholic managers would feel relatively free to both enforce and officialise this type of policy as it reflected a broader tendency to reaffirm the traditional vision of the role of the Catholic school, which emphasised the transmission of faith, the education of children in a religious environment and the correspondence between the school community and the parish community. Some Irish priests have expressed the opinion that parents should simply have to register with the local parish in order to secure a place for their child in the local Catholic National School. In an interview with the Irish Times in 2000, Michael Smith, Bishop of Meath, considered such a decision to be ‘premature’, but he added, ‘I’m not too sure an obligation should rest with the Catholic community to provide education for all – beyond meeting its own commitments to its own people, and people that share the same vision of life and who share the same vision of faith.’82

A few years later, the Catholic hierarchy still insists that Catholic schools welcome, ‘when possible’, children of all religions and none, and, for obvious reasons given the persistent lack of alternative to Catholic schools in many areas, they have rejected a more radical, exclusive blanket approach until now. But they also insist that the first mission of the Catholic school remains to offer a Catholic education for those who want it for their children and hence that the policy of prioritising the children of Catholic parents is a legitimate one, even if this means excluding other local children from the school.83 While it would be difficult to quantify this, there have been examples of Irish parents, brought up in the Catholic religion but non-practising (some of them non-believers), whose main reason for baptising their children was to ensure a place for their child in the local school and to facilitate their integration in a school where religious ceremonies, especially communion and confirmation, would be an important part of school life. In 2009, an Irish Times journalist called this practice a ‘baptism of convenience’.84 Former education minister

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Ruairi Quinn described such parents as ‘compulsory Catholics’ in an interview on RTÉ Radio on 12 March 2015.85 Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald also expressed concern about the pressure felt by some parents in this respect, even mentioning cases where the Catholic managers had tried to verify, sometimes by asking the children themselves, whether the parents went to Mass regularly.86 FitzGerald contended that such practices were likely to be counter-productive from the viewpoint of the religious authorities and to run counter to the true interest of the Church and religion. Partly as a result of these trends, over the past few years religious discrimination at enrolment has given rise to a number of protests. In March 2015, the Humanist Association of Ireland launched a poster campaign to denounce the fact that state-funded schools are allowed to discriminate against children who are not baptised.87 A new advocacy group called Equate, which describes itself as a children’s rights organisation committed to promoting equality for all children in education, was created in 2015.88 Its main focus to date has been on ending all religious discrimination at enrolment.89 Multidimensional school segregation In September 2007, the tension between the function of Catholic schools as a public service of education and their private religious function found a striking illustration when two schools had to be opened at the last minute in order to take in a majority of children of immigrants who had not managed to obtain a place in any of the local Catholic schools, not only because there were not enough places but also as a result of the policy giving priority to Catholics for enrolment. One of these new schools, in the north-west of Dublin, was opened under the patronage of the Catholic Church, despite the fact that a majority of the children were not Catholic, the Church in effect having accepted to continue playing its traditional role as a ‘public service’ for all intents and purposes, though on a temporary basis only.90 A couple of months later, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin announced that the school would be transferred to the patronage of County Dublin VEC, a historic first for a primary school.91 The government asked Educate Together to open the second school, in Balbriggan.92 The immediate result of these emergency school openings was that the children from immigrant families found themselves gathered together in those two schools. In an interview on RTÉ Television at the time, a mother explained that their family was Christian but not Catholic and that it was the absence of a baptism certificate that had led to their child being refused admission to the local school. It seems that it was for a similar reason that many other families, many of them of African origin, had not been able to enrol their children in the local Catholic schools not only of Balbriggan but also of Lucan and Blanchardstown in the greater Dublin area, as a result.93 It was following this controversy that the Archbishop of Dublin decided to introduce a quota system in two schools in the west of Dublin, with the schools being expected to accept a third of non-Catholic children, as part of a pilot project that might have led

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to this new rule being generalised in Dublin Catholic schools, but that has not happened since.94 This episode led some commentators and educational actors to raise concerns about the existence of a form of indirect ‘institutional racism’, or even to warn about the danger of ‘educational apartheid’.95 In 2005, the report of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had already pointed to the likely correlation between school segregation along cultural/religious criteria (allowed by the principle of parental choice as well as by selection at enrolment) and de-facto segregation on the basis of ‘race’ or socio-cultural origin. In 2007, the Catholic Church, with Monsignor Dan O’Connor, General Secretary of the CPSMA, as its mouthpiece, categorically rejected all such warnings or accusations and welcomed the government’s initiative to launch a survey on ‘the integration of members of ethnic and other minorities’ in primary and secondary schools, claiming that it would serve to demonstrate the inclusive character of Catholic schools.96 The inquiries commissioned by the Irish Department of Education since that date on school enrolment policies and on the extent of diversity in schools have focused not on the religious criterion but on diversity of origin (children of immigrants, Traveller children) and on the presence of children with special needs. The results of these inquiries have not revealed any form of systematic exclusion, and issues of geographic distribution, with immigrant populations being concentrated in some districts, have to be taken into account as well. But Department of Education figures from the late 2000s did highlight restrictive admission policies leading to the de-facto exclusion of children of immigrants, especially in a number of secondary-level schools.97 Evidence of such practices and of their pernicious consequences prompted the main secondary-level teachers’ union (ASTI) to declare in 2008: ‘Education should be available at the level of the local community and schools should not reinforce patterns of socio-economic or ethnic segregation already emerging in some parts of our cities.’98 At second level, the results that came out in 2008 highlighted a significant level of school segregation on the basis of socio-economic background or social class, of which both children of immigrants and children with special needs also find themselves victims.99 In the Irish education system, it so happens that the more ‘exclusive’ secondary schools (in every sense of the word) are the general education denominational schools, which most often belong to religious congregations, whereas community schools and vocational or technical schools under VEC (and now Education and Training Boards) management cater for a much more diverse school population and for a disproportionate number of immigrants or children of immigrants, as the results of the 2008 Department survey clearly showed. In May 2007, David Begg, General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, had already denounced the exclusive policies practised by many general education secondary schools towards pupils of foreign nationality.100 One of the consequences of the selective admission policies implemented by denominational secondary schools has

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been that the socio-economic segregation also doubles as or leads to forms of cultural segregation. A  survey carried out in 2007 by two British researchers on denominational secondary-level schools in London came up with similar results. It showed that children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and ‘non-white’ children were markedly under-represented in those schools despite the fact that many of them were situated in inner-city districts.101 By comparison with the highly selective practices of a number of secondary-level schools in the ‘voluntary’ sector (enrolment at birth, priority to the children of former pupils, priority to siblings, etc.) on top of the religious criteria that may be applied – the 2015 School Admissions Bill attempts to put an end to some of these practices –, the admission policies of primary schools seem somewhat less problematic at first sight. Most do welcome children who live locally, and the ‘local school’ criterion has remained a determining factor for most parents. However, the current trend towards a parallel system of schooling in which parents would be expected to choose (if they can) between the local (usually) Catholic school and a local community or Educate Together school has led some to sound the alarm, for fear of the problem of socio-economic segregation in secondary-level schools being reproduced at primary level, with the creation of a de-facto two-tier system. In September 2007, Seán Flynn, Education Correspondent for the Irish Times, wrote, ‘It is all too easy to envisage a situation where the middle class of old Ireland gravitate towards the traditional, well-established Catholic schools while the newcomer children – and perhaps the less prosperous – will move to the new state-run school.’102 This fear, combined with the stated need to preserve or fully achieve a system of local primary schools that would welcome all children regardless of socio-economic background, led Flynn to favour the idea of a new national system of public schools whose primary purpose would be to welcome all children, without any form of religious discrimination, along the lines of recommendations already made by INTO leaders. In 2011, Dympna Devine expressed a similar fear that policy derived from the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism would lead to a two-tier system of education.103 More recently, she joined other critics in describing the ‘divestment’ policy as institutionalising segregation (if not in intent, at least in outcome), potentially along both socio-economic and ‘ethnic’ lines.104 A number of parents end up ‘choosing’ a school for their child or teenager by default, because they have not been accepted in the more selective or elitist establishments, but the reverse may also be true:  one of the indirect consequences of the variable-geometry admission policies described above is that the primary or secondary schools that make particular efforts to be inclusive may become perceived as schools meant for children with special needs, Traveller or immigrant children and avoided by some parents, which just as inevitably leads to an over-representation of these categories in those schools by comparison with the local demographic pool. Recognition of this situation had already

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led the participants to the 2004 Conference on the ‘Inclusive School’ to call on the Department of Education to play a central role in putting an end to it.105 Archbishop Martin himself has been heard to denounce some of the sectarian or segregationist trends made possible or strengthened by parents’ freedom of choice. He has repeatedly criticised the exercise of this choice by parents trying to avoid schools with a more or less high proportion of immigrant children, noting in passing (through the reference to four-wheel drives) that this also had to do with socio-economic inequalities: ‘I hear of parents – even those who might fit into the categorisation of ‘good Catholic parents’ – making decisions with their feet, or with their four-wheel drives, to opt out of diversity in schools.’106 In the same speech in 2008, Martin confessed that he had been surprised by the number of letters of rejection, some of them explicitly racist, that he had received after his comments on schools, integration and diversity.107 More generally speaking, the Irish education system as it exists today encourages consumerist trends, with a number of parents picking and choosing between different types of schools, and the interest groups that control or manage the schools finding themselves in competition against one another in the same areas.108 Some commentators or educational actors, such as Fintan McCutcheon (a former Catholic school head who went on to teach in an Educate Together school) have been highly critical of the attitude of the Archbishop of Dublin and of the Catholic Church.109 It is indeed possible to question the role and indirect responsibility of the Church in the ‘ghettoisation’ of a number of schools in the west and north of Dublin especially and more generally in the perpetuation of a system that allows for widespread discrimination and segregation. However, one may also consider that the archbishop’s actions and the policies of Catholic schools are logically determined by the (perceived) interests of the Church, within a structural and legislative framework that allows them significant freedom of movement. From this perspective, the onus is rather on the State to avoid or rectify such trends and to assume its responsibilities as far as public education is concerned. Contradictory government policy on the dangers of school segregation Without even going into the immigration issue, looking to the north of Ireland is enough to question the soundness and the social consequences of school segregation, as many authors have done, whether dealing specifically with Northern Ireland or looking at it in comparative perspective with other countries.110 More surprisingly perhaps at first sight, southern Irish political leaders have taken a similar stance over the years. The signatories of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement of 1998, among them the Irish government represented by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, committed themselves to encouraging the development of so-called integrated schools, in a common declaration that presented this as a crucial means to strengthen social cohesion within what

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was advisedly called ‘the Northern Ireland community’. Successive polls carried out in Northern Ireland have shown that a great majority of inhabitants support integrated schooling. According to a survey in 2008, 84 per cent of respondents thought that integrated education was ‘important for the peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland’;111 in 2013, a survey of 400 parents of children under twelve in the Belfast area commissioned by the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education found that 83 per cent thought integrated education was ‘a vital part of creating a shared future in Northern Ireland’.112 Yet another opinion poll in the same year found that over 79 per cent of those polled would support their school becoming integrated, two-thirds agreeing that integrated schools should be the main model for the Northern Ireland education system (with agreement highest among parents).113 However, despite this clear democratic mandate, conflicting pressures from both political and religious circles and the absence of sustained political will in this direction largely explain the relative lack of progress in the integrated education sector. For our purposes here, what is most striking is that the two governments who signed the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement conducted policies that ran counter to these declarations within their respective territories (i.e. the Republic of Ireland, and England within the UK). On the British side, the Blair government simultaneously provided some financial support for the transformation of Northern Ireland religiously segregated schools into integrated schools and officially encouraged the development of religious schools (called faith schools) in England. In the Republic of Ireland, the government attitude could also be described as contradictory, to the extent that what is deemed a good thing, or even crucial, for social cohesion in Northern Ireland does not seem to be so in the context of the Irish State. All things considered, it is also tempting to contrast the education policy of successive Irish governments over the past fifteen years and their continuing acceptance of various forms of structural segregation in the school system with the policy of ‘complete school integration’ of Traveller children put in place at primary level from 1995 onwards. The government at the time chose to put an end to the existence of ‘segregated special classes’ for these children within schools, and this decision received the support of Pavee Point (a non-governmental organisation committed to the attainment of human rights for Irish Travellers) as well as of the Educational Disadvantage Committee put in place in 1998.114 The Programme for Government for 2011–16 included the commitment to ‘deliver on principles of social inclusion, particularly in the area of Traveller education’.115 Ireland’s National Traveller/Roma Integration Strategy (2011) noted that ‘historically’, ‘many Traveller children and children with special needs were educated in segregated settings’.116 For contemporary purposes, it drew from the Report and Recommendations for a Traveller Education Strategy of 2006, emphasising the principles of inclusion and intercultural education and the fact that ‘the principle of “individual educational need” rather than “Traveller identity” ’ would be paramount in future.117 The last ‘separate classes’ were closed in 2004. The annual report of the Department of Education for 2004 specified:

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In 1992, it was estimated that 30% of Travellers were receiving their primary education in segregated special classes. […] With the closure of the special classes unit in Ennis at the end of the 2004 school year, the last of the segregated special classes for Travellers attached to primary schools is now closed. The teaching of Traveller pupils in an integrated setting is further supported by over 500 resource teachers.

The primary aim put forward by the government was to fight against inequalities in educational attainment, but the decision also had a significant cultural dimension, as was confirmed by the passages on intercultural education to be found in the Department’s Guidelines on Traveller Education in Primary Schools of 2002.118 Such statements in support of integrated schooling both in the context of Northern Ireland and as far as Traveller children are concerned would tend to suggest that successive Irish governments have recognised the potential social benefits of structural integration in the education system. In this light, the continued acceptance of school segregation along religious lines by mainstream political circles in the Republic may appear somewhat contradictory. Conclusion: for a new conception of the common school This is not to say that structural integration or a system of common schools would by itself constitute a solution to all potential issues of rights and discrimination. In his book on education in divided societies, Tony Gallagher, Professor of Education at the Queen’s University of Belfast, offers an overview of international debates on the comparative merits and consequences of segregated and integrated education systems.119 Noting that common schools by themselves are no guarantee of social harmony or cohesion, let alone equality, he highlights the fact that historically the traditional conception of the common school was based on assimilationist assumptions and that the issue of respect for pluralism and diversity in these schools is an ongoing one.120 From this perspective, given the Irish State’s history of cultural and religious hegemony within the country and its consequences in education, it is understandable that members of minority groups would have misgivings about the State gaining direct control over the school system as a whole. However, such fears tend to ignore the profound social and cultural shifts that have occurred within Irish society over the past forty years or so, as well as the potential democratic input in the adoption and implementation of educational policies. There have already been significant changes in this respect, as illustrated by the development processes of school curricula. While these are certainly far from perfect, they are a far cry from the strict top-down approach of the Department of Education up until the 1970s. It is possible at least to envisage new or supplementary democratic safeguards and structures within the Irish educational context, through the empowerment of elected representatives from the school community (including children and young people as far as possible) and through the involvement of democratically elected local public authorities; the

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transformation of the VEC network into Education and Training Boards from 2013 would seem to be a potential step in this direction or at least could be used to that effect in the future. Whether in Northern Ireland or elsewhere, political and social conflicts cannot be laid at the door of the segregated nature of the school systems. At the same time, the examples given by Tony Gallagher of segregated systems in the USA, Great Britain, South Africa or Northern Ireland do point clearly to dangers that are inherent to such systems, with the perpetuation of existing social segregation, of dominant power relations between different social or cultural groups and of individual or collective forms of discrimination.121 As Gallagher shows, there is ample international evidence that religious-based school segregation de facto tends to reinforce or further amplify other forms of segregation, both along cultural (or even ‘racial’) lines and along socio-economic lines. Gallagher notes more generally that the frequent overlap of socio-economic and ‘ethnic’ school segregation, citing Sally Tomlinson’s work on the market of education (privileging parental choice) that was nurtured by successive governments in Great Britain from the late 1980s.122 With the stress now put systematically on the right of parents to choose a school for their child, the development of such a market of education in the Republic of Ireland can only be further facilitated. To sum things up, from the perspective of improved social harmony as well as of respect for the principle of equality, it would seem logical for democratic countries to try and ensure that the structural foundations of their education systems are part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Or, as Harry Judge noted in an article on faith schools in England, though he was focusing on Northern Ireland and on the danger of social fragmentation posed by schools, ‘faith-based schooling quite obviously did not of itself manufacture the tragic divisions of that society:  but nobody has yet argued that it has in any sense helped’.123 Keeping this in mind, it makes sense for Gallagher to conclude his careful reflection by pointing his readers to Walter Feinberg’s defence of the conception of the American (US) common school.124 Feinberg defends a pluralist vision that seeks ‘equality among individuals in the public sphere and freedom of association in the cultural sphere’. From this viewpoint, ‘the role of schools is to create the conditions under which choices exist, but not necessarily to promote all available options’.125 As Feinberg suggests, systems founded on common schools seem better suited than segregated systems to be part of the solution, i.e. both to respect the principle of equality between individuals and to contribute to social integration, provided they move away from the traditional assimilationist model and adopt internal dynamics that both promote respect for oneself and others and avoid locking children into fixed identity ‘scripts’.126 Both Feinberg and Gallagher put the emphasis on cultural or national identity scripts or frames, but it is perfectly possible to include religious scripts or frames in this reflection, and perhaps this should be done more explicitly for the sake of clarity.

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Notes 1 ‘School Admissions Bill:  Battle Looms over Rules on Past Pupils’, Irish Times (7 April 2015). 2 Daly, Religion Law and the Irish State, pp.  141–64 and 195–281; Mawhinney, Freedom of Religion and Schools. 3 INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, pp. 48–9. 4 Eilís Barry quoted in INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, p. 48. 5 Department of Education and Science and the Equality Authority, Schools and the Equal Status Acts [2000] (Dublin:  Department of Education and Science and the Equality Authority, 2005), pp. 13–14. 6 Equal Status Act, 2000, Section 7. Social background is not among the grounds identified in Irish equality legislation, and the Act also allows for discrimination on the basis of gender in school enrolment policies despite the fact that gender discrimination is otherwise forbidden. 7 Education Act, 1998, section 15.2.d. 8 Education Act, 1998, section 6.e. 9 INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, p. 49. In the end that particular case had been resolved without recourse to legal action. 10 The 1977 Employment Equality Act only addressed to discrimination grounds, gender and marital status. 11 Employment Equality Act, 1998, extract from section 37. 12 Employment Equality Act, 1998 (section 12)  (Church of Ireland College of Education) Order, 2000. 13 Siobhán Mullally offers an analysis of the legal implications of this clause and of the controversy it has sparked in ‘Mainstreaming Equality in Ireland: A Fair and Inclusive Accommodation?’, Legal Studies, 21:1 (2001), 99–115, at pp. 102–3. 14 Council Directive 2000/78/EC (27 November 2000), clauses 23 and 26, L303/16, Official Journal of the European Communities (2 December 2000). 15 Council Directive 2000/78/EC (27 November 2000), Section 2, Chapter III, Article 15. 16 Sean Flynn and Alison O’Connor, ‘Churches Lobbied on EU Directive’, Irish Times (19 October 2000). 17 ‘O’Toole Anger on Equality Line’, Irish Times (24 October 2000). 18 Marie O’Halloran, ‘Hanafin Defends Policy on Schools’, Irish Times (6 September 2007). 19 Daly, Religion Law and the Irish State, pp. 195–281. 20 Daly, Religion Law and the Irish State, pp. 240–1. 21 Daly, Religion Law and the Irish State, pp. 240–1. 22 Daly, Religion Law and the Irish State, p. 280. 23 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Catholic Primary Schools. 24 O’Mahony, Factors Determining School Choice. 25 O’Mahony, Factors Determining School Choice, pp. 29–30. 26 O’Flaherty, ‘Religious Control of Schooling’, p. 66. 27 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, pp. 52–3. 28 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 53. 29 Kellaghan et al., Views of the Irish Public on Education, p. 34. 30 See Helen Murray, ‘Parents Condemn Teachers over Disruption’, Sunday Tribune (Ireland) (14 April 2002).

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31 Seán Flynn, ‘Budget Cuts Last Year That Yielded Savings of €3m Are at Heart of Dispute’, Irish Times (21 October 2009); Gordon Linney (former aArchdeacon of the Church of Ireland in Dublin), ‘Cuts Pose a Real Threat to Future of Protestant Schools’, Irish Times (5 October 2009). 32 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 48. 33 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Schools’, pp. 34–8. 34 Dick Spicer (Coordinator of the Irish Humanist Association), interviewed in ‘Biggest Ethical Group “No Religion” ’, Irish Times (6 June 2003); Brian Whiteside (President of the Irish Humanist Association), ‘Equality for the Non-Religious Is Long Overdue’, Irish Times (31 March 2009); See also the Association’s website, www.humanism.ie. 35 Letters to the Editor by Michael P. Kelly and Caroline Molloy, both published under the heading ‘Faith-Based or Secular Schools?’, Irish Times (17 April 2009). 36 Devine, Children, Power and Schooling, pp. 1–4. 37 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, p. 3, paragraph 17. 38 Ray Dooley (Children’s Rights Alliance), ‘Cherishing Children’s Rights’, Introductory Speech at the Educate Together Ethos Conference, 28 February 2003, available at www.educatetogether.ie/reference_articles/Ref_Art_006.html (accessed 12 November 2009). 39 Kilkenny Incest Investigation: Report Presented to Mr. Brendan Howlin TD, Minister for Health by South Eastern Health Board (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1993); quoted in Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, p. 7. 40 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, pp. 7–8. 41 Atheist Ireland, ‘The School Admissions Bill Will Institutionalise Religious Discrimination’, 7 April 2015, statement on the Atheist Ireland website, www.atheist.ie/2015/04/school-admissions-bill-will-institutionalise-religous-discrimination/ (accessed 13 May 2015). 42 Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, ‘IHREC submits views and recommendations on the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2015’, 18 November 2015, www.ihrec.ie/news/2015/11/18/ihrec-submits-views-and-recommendations-onthe-edu/ (accessed 14 March 2016). 43 Unanimous decision by a chamber of seven judges from seven different countries:  Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Lithuania, Serbia, Hungary, Turkey. Chamber Judgment, Lautsi v. Italy (application no. 30814/06), 3 November 2009. 44 Press release issued by the Registrar, Chamber Judgment, Lautsi v. Italy (application no. 30814/06), 3 November 2009. 45 European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, Lautsi and others v. Italy (application no. 30814/06), 18 March 2011. 46 ‘[T]‌he Minister […] (e)  shall not require any student to attend instruction in any subject which is contrary to the conscience of the parents of the student or in the case of a student who has reached the age of 18 years, the student’, Education Act, 1998, section 30(2)(e). 47 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, p. 26, paragraph 152. 48 Children’s Rights Alliance, From Rhetoric to Rights, p. 24. 49 See Anne Cleary, Phádraig Nic Ghiolla and Suzanne Quin (eds), Understanding Children, vol. I, State, Education and Economy (Cork:  Oak Tree Press, 2001), Introduction; quoted in Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 49. 50 Clarke, Church and State, pp. 214–26. 51 Clarke, Church and State, p. 214.

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52 Clarke, Church and State, p. 221. 53 Clarke, Church and State, p. 221. 54 Clarke, Church and State, p. 226. 55 Barnette decision (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette), 319 US 624 (1943) and 638; quoted in Clarke, Church and State, p. 221. 56 Clarke, Church and State, pp. 221–2. 57 Margaret A. Libreri, ‘Rights, Religious Education and Denominational Schools’, Irish Educational Studies, 8:1 (1989), pp. 115–28. 58 Deegan, ‘ “Intentionally or Otherwise” ’, p. 230. 59 John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916). 60 Dympna Devine, Anne Lodge and Jim Deegan, ‘Activating Voices through Practice: Democracy, Care and Consultation in the Primary School’, in Jim Deegan, Dympna Devine and Anne Lodge (eds), Primary Voices:  Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools (Dublin:  Institute of Public Administration, 2004), pp. 245–6. 61 Mullally, ‘Mainstreaming Equality in Ireland’, pp.  99–115; quoted in Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 51. 62 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, p. 51. 63 David Rubinstein and Colin Stoneman (eds), Education for Democracy, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth:  Penguin Books, 1972). This book focused mainly on issues of social inequality in education, but some of its contributors, such as Michael Duane, also had a keen interest in children’s rights. See Paul Adams, Leila Berg, Nan Berger, Michael Duane, A.S. Neill and Robert Ollendorff (eds), Children’s Rights: Towards the Liberation of the Child (New York: Praeger, 1971). 64 Devine, Children, Power and Schooling, pp. 1, 124–5. 65 In this regard, it is interesting to note that the translation offered in the Robert & Collins dictionary for ‘parish school’ is ‘école communale’, which smoothes out the religious connotation of ‘parish’, whereas the online dictionary ‘wordreference. com’ translates ‘école paroissiale’ into ‘church school’. 66 Martin, ‘Changing Society, Changing Schools’. 67 Lucienne Germain and Didier Lassalle, ‘Communautés, communautarisme, multiculturalisme’, in Lucienne Germain and Didier Lassalle (eds), Communauté(s), communautarisme(s): aspects comparatifs (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), pp. 5–22. 68 Among the many books on the subject, Milena Doytcheva, Le Multiculturalisme (Paris: La Découverte, 2005). 69 For example, Françoise Barret-Ducrocq (ed.), Communauté (Forum international, Maison de l’UNESCO, 9–10 November 2004), (Paris: Éditions UNESCO-Grasset, 2). 70 Victoria Ward and Katherine Donnelly, ‘Changes in Society Mean School Bus Routes “Are Way Out of Date” ’, Irish Independent (26 August 2004). 71 For a comparative analysis, see Marie McAndrew, ‘Should National Minorities/ Majorities Share Common Institutions or Control Their Own Schools? A Comparison of Policies and Debates in Quebec, Northern Ireland, and Catalonia’, in Christiane Harzig and Danielle Juteau (eds), The Social Construction of Diversity:  Recasting the Master Narrative of Industrial Nations (New  York:  Berghahn Books, 2003), pp. 186–211. 72 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 202. 73 Order of preference confirmed by Richard Clarke, Church of Ireland Bishop for Meath and Kildare, in ‘On Faith, Culture and Giant Pandas: A Church of Ireland

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Perspective on Trusteeship and School Ethos’, in Catherine Furlong and Luke Monahan (eds), School Culture and Ethos: Cracking the Code (Dublin: Marino Institute of Education, 2000), p. 168. 74 Application Form, available at www.stratfordcollege.ie/admissions (accessed 20 May 2015). 75 INTO, Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System, p. 10. 76 Emer Smyth, Merike Darmody, Frances McGinnity and Delma Byrne (Economic and Social Research Institute), Adapting to Diversity: Irish Schools and Newcomer Students (Dublin: ESRI, 2009), pp. 63–7. 77 Dominican College Admissions Policy, available at www.dominican-college. com/2012-03-28-13-53-04/policies (accessed 20 May 2015). 78 Dominican College website on its admissions policy, available at www. dominican-college.com (accessed 11 December 2006). 79 Home page of the website of Ardscoil La Salle, Raheny, Dublin, www.ardscoillasalle. ie (accessed 11 December 2006). 80 Ardscoil La Salle Admissions Procedures, available at www.ardscoillasalle.ie/ ALS/2015/index.php/admission (accessed 20 May 2015). 81 Máire Masterson, Cathaoirleach, Education Committee, in INTO, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, pp. 57–8. 82 Michael Smith, Bishop of Meath, in ‘Bishop Queries Non-Believers’ Availing of Catholic Schools’, Irish Times (19 May 2000). 83 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Catholic Primary Schools, p. 3. 84 Fiona McCann, ‘Baptism of Convenience’, Irish Times (7 October 2009). 85 Today with Sean O’Rourke, RTÉ Radio 1 (12 March 2015). 86 FitzGerald, ‘New Catholic School Policy Could Produce Unintended “Apartheid” ’. 87 Humanist Association of Ireland, Press Release on Humanist Association of Ireland poster campaign, 23 March 2015, available at www.humanism.ie/2015/03/ baptism-2/ (accessed 20 May 2015). 88 Equate homepage, www.equateireland.ie/ (accessed 14 March 2016). 89 Carl O’Brien, ‘Campaign Seeks Equality for Children in Education System’, Irish Times, 9 December 2015. 90 There was extensive media coverage at the time. Fiona Gartland, ‘Happy Pupils on First Day of Class at New School Set Up Speedily’, Irish Times (4 September 2007); Myra Lynch (letter to the Editor), ‘Crisis Over Primary School Places’, Irish Times (13 September 2007). 91 Niall Murray, ‘Doubts Over Primary School Plans’, Irish Examiner (14 December 2007). 92 The circumstances of the creation of the school in Balbriggan in September 2007 were mentioned briefly in Educate Together’s annual report in 2007, available at www.educatetogether.ie/about-2/annual-reports/ (accessed 20 April 2011). 93 Fintan McCutcheon, ‘Is Our School System Institutionally Racist?’, Metro Éireann (13 September 2007). 94 ‘Dublin Schools to End Catholics-First Policy’, RTÉ News at One [TV] (23 January 2008). 95 McCutcheon (head of a primary school), ‘Is Our School System Institutionally Racist?’; FitzGerald (former Taoiseach), ‘New Catholic School Policy Could Produce Unintended “Apartheid” ’. 96 Michael Kelly and David Quinn, ‘Over 2000 Schools in Diversity Review’, The Irish Catholic (13 September 2007).

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97 Department of Education and Science, Audit of School Enrolment Policies by Regional Offices Service, November 2007. 98 ASTI Submission to Department of Education and Science Consultation on Intercultural Education Policy (2008), www.asti.ie/about-asti/policy/ inter-culturalism (accessed 20 May 2015). 99 Seán Flynn, ‘ “Educational Apartheid” Exposed in Schools Audit’ and ‘Subtle Form of Apartheid Permeates School System’, Irish Times (28 April 2008). 100 David Begg, quoted in Seán Flynn, ‘Few Foreign Nationals in Some Schools’, Irish Times (24 May 2007). 101 The two researchers were Rebecca Allen (University of London) and Anne West (Professor of Education Policy at the London School of Economics). Jamie Doward and Anushka Asthana, ‘Faith Schools “Cherry-Picking” ’, Observer (16 September 2007), p. 2. 102 Seán Flynn, ‘Opportunities – and Dangers – in Shake-up of Primary Education’, Irish Times (25 September 2007). 103 Dympna Devine, ‘Schools Must Not Segregate by Choice of Faith’, Irish Times (18 April 2011). 104 Joe Humphreys, ‘Concern School Divestment Policy Causing Ethnic Segregation’, Irish Times (25 February 2015). 105 INTO, Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, p. 59. 106 Martin, ‘Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs’. 107 In his book on asylum-seekers and refugees in Ireland, Paul Cullen also mentioned that teachers who were actively encouraging a multicultural approach in their schools had been the target of hate reactions from some parents. Cullen, Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Ireland, p. 51. 108 O’Sullivan evokes this ‘marketisation’ of the Irish system and of parental outlooks in Cultural Politics and Irish Education, ­chapters 5 and 6. 109 McCutcheon, ‘Is Our School System Institutionally Racist?’. 110 Claire McGlynn, ‘Integrated and Faith-Based Schooling in Northern Ireland’, Irish Journal of Education, 36 (2005), 49–62; Tony Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp.  119–35; McAndrew, ‘Should National Minorities/Majorities Share Common Institutions?’ In his work, Gallagher also looks into the political and social issues related to school segregation in the USA, Britain and South Africa. 111 Omnibus Survey by Millward Brown Ulster, quoted and referenced on the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education website, www.nicie.org/aboutus (accessed 12 January 2010). 112 Lindsay Fergus, ‘Parents Demand 800% Increase in Integrated Primary School Places’, Belfast Telegraph (24 June 2013). 113 LucidTalk, Attitudinal Survey, February 2013, poll results available at www.ief. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Lucid-Talk-Attitudinal-Survey250213. pdf (accessed 20 May 2015). 114 Education Coordinator, Pavee Point Travellers’ Centre, Travellers and Education (nd), available at www.paveepoint.ie/pdf/Education_Leaflet.pdf (accessed 25 May 2015). 115 Programme for Government: Government for National Recovery 2011–2016 (2011), p. 23. 116 Department of Justice, Ireland’s National Traveller/Roma Integration Strategy (2011).

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117 Department of Justice, Ireland’s National Traveller/Roma Integration Strategy, p. 7. 118 Department of Education and Science, Guidelines on Traveller Education in Primary Schools, pp. 34–53. 119 Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, pp. 136–55. 120 Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, p. 150. 121 See chapters devoted to these examples in Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies. 122 Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, p. 97. 123 Harry Judge, ‘Faith-Based Schools and State Funding: A Partial Argument’, Oxford Review of Education, 27:4 (2001), 463–74, at p. 471. 124 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998); quoted in Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, pp. 148–55. 125 Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, p. 150. 126 In Feinberg’s words, those ‘scripts’, ‘stories’ and ‘frames’ are the ones that build or delineate cultural ‘communities’. Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, pp. 153–4.

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Schools, ethos and inclusion

As we have seen, there is a basic conflict between the dominant discourse in the Republic of Ireland on the ‘inclusive’ character of Irish schools from a religious perspective and the continuing structural reality of religious segregation. Despite this structural reality, as a result of social developments, most Irish schools now have a much more diversified population than in the past along cultural and religious lines (taking into account the religious beliefs of parents), even if there are significant variations depending on the school. It is thus also necessary to focus on the issue of the degree of inclusion or inclusiveness within the schools, this issue being understood here as intrinsically linked with the notions of absence of discrimination and of equal treatment and respect between children. It has already been acknowledged that most existing schools and their teachers have made significant efforts to welcome children from varied cultural and religious backgrounds. The point here is not to put into question the goodwill and commitment of teachers in Irish schools but to further examine some of the effects of the system as well as its ideological foundations and preconceptions as they may affect even the most ‘tolerant’ and undermine the efforts of the best-meaning of educational actors. In the main, until now, the government, posing as a neutral arbitrator, has reasserted and upheld the right of patrons to impose their own ethos, and, in the vast majority of cases, a specific religious viewpoint, in their schools. On the one hand, there is a common national-school curriculum set by public authorities in most subjects, a set of common rules and regulations that all schools have to adhere to (such as the number of hours devoted to such and such a subject, etc.) and a department inspectorate whose role is to ensure that these rules and curricula are respected. On the other hand, as far as the protection of fundamental rights and equal citizenship is concerned, the idea of state intervention in the internal workings and in the social, cultural and religious aims of each school would still be considered as unacceptable interference by most religious patrons, and the Irish State has been extremely reluctant to tackle the issue head on. Such protection should arguably be the very

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first duty of a democratic state in state-funded schools, and researchers have already highlighted the existence of various forms of subordination and discrimination inherent to the denominational nature of the Irish education system, most notably Alison Mawhinney in her analysis of freedom of religion in schools.1 Some implications of the content of religious education and of curriculum integration in primary schools in this regard have already been noted in Chapter 4. The present chapter will also draw on the work of sociologists of education Anne Lodge and Dympna Devine and of specialist of equality issues, Kathleen Lynch, who, along with other colleagues, have carried out field surveys in Irish primary schools on the themes of diversity and equality over the past few years.2 Some progress has been made recently, with legislation to prevent patrons from discriminating against teachers on the basis of their sexual orientation in particular.3 If such state intervention is now widely considered as legitimate, it nevertheless begs the question of why the Irish State remains so reluctant to outlaw discrimination on all grounds and uphold the fundamental rights of both children and adults in all state-funded schools. What use is an ethos? Over the past twenty years, the concept of ‘school ethos’ has become all-pervasive in the political and educational discourse related to the school system in the Republic of Ireland. Looking at the definitions, uses and implications of this concept as it has developed in Irish education is useful to understand its success and to highlight its ideological and strategic role in the perpetuation of the current system. Even though the use of the word was avoided in the 1998 Education Act (whereas the 1995 White Paper had explicitly referred to it),4 the idea of a ‘characteristic spirit’ defining each school is central to the conception of the Irish education system conveyed in the Act, which in fact proposes what appears to be a (wide) definition of the word ‘ethos’:  ‘the characteristic spirit of the school as determined by the cultural, educational, moral, religious, social, linguistic and spiritual values and traditions which inform and are characteristic of the objectives and conduct of the school’.5 From this viewpoint, schools are seen as legitimately promoting specific sets of cultural and moral values and traditions, which are first and foremost those of their owners or administrators, and school boards are required by the State to preserve and uphold the ‘characteristic spirit of the school’. In this definition, the understanding of the term seems to go beyond a purely religious dimension, and, consequently, the clause may cover schools whose patrons do not define them as denominational (Educate Together, for example, have developed a rationale on what they present as the particular ethos of their schools over the past few years), but a brief historical overview of the use of the word ‘ethos’ in Ireland systematically points to the importance of this religious dimension.

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It should first be pointed out that the term itself has only become part of the Irish educational discourse since the beginning of the 1990s. It does not appear, for example, in the index of Séamas Ó Buachalla’s 1988 book on Irish education policy.6 In its first notable appearances, as in an article by Kevin Williams of the Mater Dei Institute for the journal Doctrine and Life in 1992, it specifically referred to the notion of religious ethos.7 In Ethos and Education in Ireland (2003), James Norman, also of the Mater Dei Institute, deals essentially with the Catholic school ethos – although, tellingly, this is not specified in the title. In their contribution to the debate around the 1992 Green Paper on education (which represented the first step towards the 1998 Education Act), the Catholic authorities offered their own definition of the concept of school ethos: ‘Ethos is actually the moral climate, or spirit, which exists in any group or institution. Every education attempts to generate an atmosphere which will reflect the key characteristics of the educational enterprise.’8 Since the 1990s, some publications have sought to further widen the potential meaning of the concept as it may relate more generally to the notion of ‘school culture’. In his introduction to a collective work entitled School Culture and Ethos, Luke Monahan, head of the Centre for Education Services at the Marino Institute of Education (which belongs to the Christian Brothers) presents the school ethos as the expression of ‘the lived reality of the values of the school’, with the combined influence of the school staff, parents and pupils.9 Among the values making up the school ethos, Monahan identifies, in the following order (and with the following distinction), the values fixed by the owners of the school on the one hand, and those of the pupils, teaching staff, parents and supporting staff on the other. In this conception of school ethos, there is thus a dichotomy between the school patron and the people (children and adults) who make up the school community, with the patron having the upper hand in the hierarchy of values. Generally speaking, it is clear, however, that the more common understanding of the word has remained closely linked with religion and the religious affiliation of school patrons, and Denis O’Sullivan only refers to the notion of ‘religious ethos’ in his detailed analysis of the cultural stakes of Irish education policy in the second half of the twentieth century.10 Indeed, the more defensive position that the proponents of Catholic schools in Ireland have found themselves in as a result of the profound cultural changes in Irish society as a whole has led them to feel the need to formalise their conception of the Catholic school and give explicit shape to the nature and missions of these schools. The declining influence of the Catholic Church,11 the significant decline in the number of members of religious orders involved in education and their replacement by lay school heads and teachers, have led Catholic educators to try and articulate more fully what they see as the underlying value system of the Catholic school, in an attempt to preserve its influence in schools and through educational actors who are themselves no longer part of the regular or secular orders. The setting up of deeds of trust or deeds of variation (that school boards would have to respect even in the event of a transfer of ownership to

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the State) has been another way for denominational schools to perpetuate their ‘characteristic spirit’ by imposing it through legal means.12 Interestingly, beyond this definition of religious ethos, and even though the development of a reflection on the concept of ethos was first – and mainly – driven by proponents of Catholic schools, the collective thinking on the notion of ‘school culture’ in the wider sense – i.e. in the sense of the values, conceptions and aims that find expression (implicitly or explicitly) in the collective life of each school – has opened up new avenues for analysis and a potential questioning of the elements that make up this school culture as well as of the gap between expressions of principles and realities, as some of the contributions to School Culture and Ethos attest. Such questioning may also be interpreted as a sign of the need felt by many educational actors to take stock of ongoing changes in Irish schools and to redefine their role and that of their school. The contemporary development of the concept of school ethos, which was gradually taken up and adopted by the (mostly religious) interest groups involved in the education system, has thus taken place in an attempt to preserve both the main structural characteristics of the Irish school system and the transmission of a particular set of cultural and moral values. Catholic authors have stressed both the distinctive character and the moral dimension of the concept of ethos (although this specifically moral dimension is more or less present according to the basic definitions of ethos).13 As Louis O’Flaherty has remarked, even though the definition of ethos proposed to the government by the Catholic authorities in 1992 (quoted above) was meant to be all-encompassing, the main purpose of the Catholic hierarchy was to justify the perpetuation of the religious orientation of ‘its’ schools.14 The proposed definition pointed to the improbable existence of a neutral ethos in any school, but O’Flaherty also notes that the ‘unlikelihood of neutrality as a defining characteristic of a school’s moral climate does not warrant a jump to the conclusion that a particular kind of ethos may therefore be imposed’ on both teachers and pupils.15 In the contemporary Irish social and educational context, such an imposition may in fact be assimilated to an abuse of power. In its most common usage in Irish education, the notion of ethos has been instrumental in perpetuating the segregated school system, proponents of each type of school repeatedly emphasising the distinctive character of their schools and their ‘added value’ in the market of education. The widespread adoption of the notion of school ethos to characterise and justify the distinctive character and message of different types of schools in Ireland has also served to perpetuate a hierarchical vision of educational rights that gives precedence to organised interest groups over individuals and to adults over children, at a time when the democratic deficit of most Irish schools has been increasingly questioned within the system itself. In the Irish context, the idea that each school type should have a specific ethos has thus been legitimised and is still largely taken for granted. Within this mindset, the next question becomes that of the comparative merits of different types of ethos as far as inclusiveness is concerned.

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Ethos, power and inclusion: the democratic deficit of denominational schools The denominational nature of schools is obviously not the only element limiting or undermining the development of a democratic school culture. A number of other constraints exist, and, in the Irish context, Timothy Murphy for example (following the reflection of Denis O’Sullivan) considers that the development of democratic citizenship has been impeded by both the ‘theocentric’ and ‘mercantile’ paradigms and their influence on education in the Republic of Ireland.16 This notwithstanding, it remains true that the denominational nature of schools infringes upon principles of equality and freedom which are ‘foundational prerequisites of the democratic project in education’.17 In a 2006 publication on Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System, the INTO raised the question of the comparative merits of schools as regards inclusion, noting that ‘the unavailability of schools other than those with a Catholic ethos restricts the choice of parents who may wish to send their children to a school which reflects their own faith, or has a more inclusive ethos’.18 The organisation of primary-school teachers is generally cautious in its declarations relating to Catholic schools and religion and quick to praise efforts made on the ground. At the same time, it upholds a demanding conception of inclusion which brings the focus back to the link between school and local community and strongly suggests that the current system cannot be deemed satisfactory in this regard: Irish primary schools have risen to the many challenges presented to them by a changing society. While it is important to remember that societal change cannot be managed by schools alone, it is also vital that the role of the primary school at the heart of a community is recognised. If Ireland is to become an inclusive country, which truly values every child, regardless of their place of birth, then policies and resources must be put in place which allow schools to play their part in creating that society.19

For the teachers’ organisation, the ‘less inclusive’ character of Catholic schools is self-evident, whereas Catholic spokesmen regularly protest against any analysis that would put into question the ability of their schools to be inclusive, especially as compared with other schools like those of the Educate Together network. Is it possible for denominational or religious schools to be truly inclusive and to ‘have regard to the principles and requirements of a democratic society and have respect and promote respect for the diversity of values, beliefs, traditions, languages and ways of life in society’, as the 1998 Education Act expects them to?20 The same Act may in fact be said to undermine this very expectation by allowing religious institutions to impose particular sets of values and beliefs in state-funded schools and the already mentioned legal exemptions to principles of equality reinforce this trend. School boards have a legal obligation to promote the ‘characteristic spirit’ of their school, while teachers and pupils are expected at the very least not to undermine this largely predetermined school ethos.

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Characteristically, in a publication on asylum-seekers in schools in 2000, the Department of Education and Science referred to the need to ‘minimise’ discrimination on the basis of ‘culture, ethnicity, race or religion’: In a society which is organised according to the principles of democracy and (cultural) pluralism, special care and attention should be paid to groups who are in the minority to ensure that discrimination on the basis of culture, ethnicity, race or religion is minimised and social integration becomes a reality.21

Such a choice of words is revealing of the State’s de-facto acceptance of discrimination. This particular formulation might also have been a way to recognise the practical difficulty of eliminating discrimination within a determined social environment, but at the same time the State here seemed to waive the very principle and goal of non-discrimination to start with. Over the past decade (as we saw in Chapter 4), the Irish Catholic Church has constantly reaffirmed the principle that a Catholic ethos should permeate all aspects of school life. In a memorandum addressed to Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe in September 2008, representatives of church interests in the field of education in Ireland (the Bishops’ Education Commission, the Catholic School Managers’ Association and the CORI) took up this idea once again: Catholic schools are communities with a characteristic spirit that permeates all aspects of school life, and the notion that this could be confined to religious instruction is a grave misconception. For these reasons, it is imperative that the Catholic school must retain the right to articulate its own values, without apology or reserve, and to expect all who manage and work therein to respect and uphold the stated values of the school.22

The chosen formulation, with the mention of the school’s ‘own values’, assimilates the school to its patrons or religious managers. It legitimises the imposition of a particular set of values ‘from above’ and ignores the reality of the diversity of values and opinions of the people who make up the school community as a whole, be they parents, teachers or the children themselves. By contrast, during the debate on the Education Bill in 1997, Fionnuala Kilfeather, who was Primary-School Coordinator for the Parents’ National Council at the time, had declared that, whoever the school owners might be, the education that took place in Irish schools did not belong to any particular group: ‘It belongs to us, the citizens of Ireland.’23 Irish sociologists of education, Anne Lodge, Jim Deegan and Dympna Devine, have noted the existence of a democratic deficit in the Irish education system and the fact that the Education Act of 1998 has represented very relative and limited progress in this respect: ‘Given the majority representation of the Trustee, as enshrined in the Education Act, the discordant voices of others can be silenced if it is perceived that they threaten the dominant ethos of the school.’24 In their critical analysis of government policy, they draw an explicit link between democratic practice, power structures and inclusion in schools:

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The current laissez faire approach to inclusion cannot work because it fails to challenge the dominant/subordinate dynamic in existing power structures. Real inclusion challenges traditional hierarchies and norms by threatening the pre-eminent position of the powerful.25

In this context they mention the importance of freedom of expression and of the right to self-determination for a true equality of status and hence the need to reject the various forms of ideological imposition used by interest groups in positions of power, as they tend to instate subordination and obscure or marginalise potentially discordant voices.26 These remarks deal with the notion of equality of status in general and their scope goes beyond the religious dimension, but they appear particularly relevant to this dimension within the Irish context. As Lodge notes, the denominational nature of the system does not allow for an equal recognition of ‘difference’, given that ‘the values, practices and perspectives of the dominant group (in particular, the Roman Catholic Church) are expressed as cultural and institutional norms in Irish primary education’.27 In this context, Lodge quotes Iris Marion Young who describes the lack of respect or inequality of esteem towards difference on the part of a dominant or majority culture as a form of cultural imperialism, which is experienced by subordinated groups as a form of enforced invisibility or cultural domination.28 From this perspective, the strong presence of Catholic religious symbols (crosses and crucifixes, statues and portraits of the Virgin Mary, etc.) in the physical environment of the vast majority of schools can only strengthen this sense of cultural and religious domination. Regardless of current church discourse on inclusiveness in Catholic schools, it is bound to undermine any attempt made in parallel to ensure ‘that all children irrespective of their colour, ethnic group, or ability can feel at home and represented within the school’ (as the authors of the 2005 and 2006 Intercultural Education Guidelines advise).29 Significantly, most recent analyses of the situation in Ireland warn against forms of cultural and religious imperialism, but they still tend to focus more on the notions of difference and religious diversity in schools and hence on children’s belonging to predetermined religious groupings than on the issue of the individual rights of children in a democratic context. John Dewey’s writings on the link between education and democracy were mentioned briefly in the previous chapter, when discussing the distinction between ‘group democracy’ and ‘individual democracy’. According to Olivier Voirol, Dewey in fact offers ways to go beyond the strict opposition ‘between difference and equality, between the common and the singular’, by attempting to ‘envisage cultural plurality and recognition, not in terms of fixed cultural identities but in the shape of permanent processes of reciprocal constitution of both the common and the singular’.30 This conception prefigures the writings of Edward W. Said, even if Said insists more on the underlying issues of power and cultural domination.31 It is also in line with the theory of intercultural education as it has been developed by specialists, as it propounds a dynamic view of cultural plurality or diversity that can only find its full expression in contact and exchange, and hence in the

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reality of cultural diversity within the same space, within the same school in the field of education. While Dewey’s approach (developed in the early twentieth century) rejected essentialist conceptions of culture, freeing individuals from rigid and exclusive cultural frameworks, on the other hand it did not fully tackle relationships of power and authority between adults and children in school. The main point here is that any examination of democratic issues in schools in our contemporary societies should include the issue of respect of fundamental individual rights, be they those of adults or those of children. This reservation on one of the dominant preconceptions within Irish educational research in no way detracts from the analysis by researchers such as Anne Lodge of the forms of cultural imperialism in Irish schools. Practices mentioned as the mark of the dominant group include, apart from religious instruction, daily prayers, the celebration of liturgical ceremonies throughout the school year, along with the sacramental preparation specific to Catholic schools, which takes up a significant part of the year and is part of school life, and as such can create a strong feeling of isolation and exclusion in the children who do not partake of it.32 In 1996, Áine Hyland quoted an Irish journalist, mother of three children, as saying that she had resigned herself to having them baptised so that they could go to the local Catholic school and feel part of it, because she could not face fighting for a potential alternative: My local primary school is bright and sparkling. I  am a coward and I  will stick with the mainstream, something I would be less likely to do were I not a parent. Thus are societies bent into submission and questionable authorities and practices maintained. Thus are things set in stone.33

As we saw in Chapter 6, such situations have since become commonplace in Ireland, to the point of coining the phrase ‘compulsory Catholics’, but it was in the 1990s that the human difficulties created by the lack of respect for freedom of conscience in the Irish school system started to be documented in a systematic way. Out of the many testimonies gathered by David Alvey for the Campaign to Separate Church and State association in 1991 and 1993, the author mentioned numerous cases of children who had been stigmatised and of parents tossed back and forth between schools because they did not belong to the parish, etc.34 At the time, these books did not receive much media attention, whereas over the past few years similar difficulties have been aired much more often on the radio or mentioned in other mainstream media. This is probably a measure of increasing numbers of parents facing them as much as of the fact that their qualms and criticisms might now be considered more readily as legitimate, indicating heightened public awareness of these issues generally in the Republic of Ireland. In November 2009, for example, the host of the popular radio show Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio 1 evoked the fear expressed by parents who did not consider themselves as Catholic any more that their children would be marginalised in a Catholic school if they did not participate in sacramental preparation, since it was seen as an integral part of the social fabric of the school.35

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In her survey on the experiences of parents with ‘minority beliefs’ (including no religion) in 2004, Lodge quotes a mother who ‘explained how she felt that she had to subordinate her own spirituality to that of the school in order not to confuse her young child’ (otherwise the child would have found herself caught in the crossfire as it were).36 At the conference on ‘the inclusive school’ that took place in the same year, the Equality Authority legal expert Eilís Barry mentioned the case of a teacher who wanted a non-Catholic child to attend Mass and participate in the communion (the case was brought before the Equality Authority but it was eventually solved without going to court).37 Informal exchanges with a number of primary-school teachers show that this might have been an extreme case (given the teacher’s overt insistence), but on the other hand it is a well-known fact that children from non-Catholic backgrounds are often expected to remain in class during religious education for practical reasons, given the difficulties involved in finding an alternative solution for them. Other instances tend to confirm the lack of a clear distinction between expectations in religious teaching and in the teaching of other subjects: for example, the anecdote (recounted by a primary-school teacher in 2009) of a little girl of Nigerian origin, whose parents were not Catholic but of Methodist tradition, and who responded so readily to questions as part of the preparation for communion that her teacher begged her parents to allow her to receive her First Communion alongside the other children in her class, which her parents accepted in the end. Religious discrimination may be linked to the imposition not only of the religious faith itself but also of related moral views. It may concern teachers as well as children. Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge’s work on inequality and discrimination in Irish schools has highlighted among other things the specific difficulties encountered by teachers and young people as a result of their sexual orientation, the authors noting that, while discrimination against homosexual people has been a result of the dominant socio-cultural discourse more generally in Ireland, it has also been explicitly encouraged by the Catholic Church among others.38 Over the past few years, there have been a number of articles on the plight of gay teachers in Ireland, many of them with interviews of individual teachers recounting instances of active discrimination or harassment.39 As far as government policy is concerned, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, in his address to the INTO conference in April 2013, pledged to amend Section 37 of the 1998 Education Act to ban discrimination against LGBT people in schools.40 The relevant legislation was indeed finally passed two years later, in the wake of the successful referendum on same-sex marriage in May 2015. This is a mark of the incremental progress made in this respect, with the government moving to amend part of Section 37 but not to completely remove it from the Act, in other words acting to put an end to a particular form of discrimination but not to ban all potential forms of legal discrimination outright.41 In theory, unlike members of the school board, teachers do not necessarily have to uphold the ethos of a religious school any more, but they are still legally

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bound not to undermine it or put it into question. Compared to past practice, the Catholic hierarchy has certainly adopted a more open or ‘tolerant’ attitude towards non-practising and even non-Catholic teachers, parents and pupils. In 2007, Education Correspondent Seán Flynn mentioned the case of Eileen Flynn, a teacher who had been fired in 1984 because she had had a child out of wedlock (the teacher had lost her court case at the time), noting that this kind of thing had not happened since.42 At the same time, the legal distinction mentioned above is a fine one, as becomes obvious with the Church’s representatives’ continued insistence that the boards of management and interview boards of Catholic schools have the right to question prospective employees on whether they support the school’s religious ethos.43 In January 2015, Michael Drumm, Chairman of the Catholic Schools’ Partnership (himself a priest) was quoted as saying that school managers and patrons ‘would have to be able to guarantee to the parents that the principal of the school and the key officers of the school would actually support the ethos of the school’.44 In a contribution to a conference on ‘School Culture and Ethos’ held at the Marino Institute of Education in 2000, former INTO president Dónal Ó Loingsigh pointed out that the imposition of a number of religious norms is a characteristic not only of the Catholic school but also of Anglican, Presbyterian, Muslim and Jewish schools, contending that, in such a context, religious minorities could only be tolerated and could never claim equal status.45 Speaking at the same conference, Billy Fitzpatrick, then in charge of the education and research sector of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (and former president of the TUI), insisted on the need to adopt a wider democratic vision, precisely because of the limits to equality of status inherent to the denominational system. He postulated that ‘the dominant feature of a school’s culture and ethos’ in a democratic society should be inclusivity and a commitment to democratic values. Keeping this in mind, in the name of TUI, he held that ‘only schools and educational organisations, which operate under the principles of non-selectivity, co-education, multi- or non-denominational status, life long learning and democratic accountability, can claim to project a truly inclusive ethos.’46 What about Educate Together schools and the new Community National Schools? To the extent that they have insisted on the distinctiveness of their own ethos or characteristic spirit, the Educate Together body has inscribed its schools within the perspective of the perceived legitimacy of parental choice between different types of schools in the same way as religious authorities. From a democratic perspective, however, there is a crucial difference between Educate Together schools and denominational schools since the ‘characteristic spirit’ of Educate Together schools is explicitly founded on democratic and egalitarian principles, unlike that of religious schools. We will come back to the peculiar position of Educate Together later in this chapter.

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The few new Community National Schools that have been opened since 2008 have similarly adopted a policy of non-discrimination across the board, starting with their admissions policy, although there have been lingering issues with church implication, equality of treatment and respect for children’s rights, in relation to religious education in particular (as we saw in Chapter 4). They were at first described as ‘interdenominational’ by Education Minister Mary Hanafin,47 but the official label then became ‘multi-belief ’, in an attempt to include children from families of all faiths and none.48 Community National Schools are state-run schools and are meant to be inclusive and to respect equality legislation. According to the presentation by the Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board, they ‘provide for all children in the same manner and do not privilege one belief group over another’, but this formulation, based on group faith rather than individual freedom of conscience and religion, and the stated practice that recognises only four main faith groups, somewhat surprisingly labelled ‘Catholic, Christian, Muslim and Other’, both point to inevitable inequalities of treatment between children as well as between different faith groups.49 Denominational ethos and the management of religious diversity: dumbed-down inclusion Denominational school patrons have found themselves caught between a defensive reassertion of the place of religion and religious values in ‘their’ schools and the pressure put on them to give more substance to their parallel assertion of the inclusive character of these schools. The inherent contradiction between the two begs the question of what they mean exactly by inclusion or inclusiveness. Previous analysis, on their discriminatory admissions policies, on the continued insistence on the patrons’ ethos permeating school life and on the contents of the RE syllabuses (especially at post-primary level), consistently – and rather logically – confirms a dominant view of the religious hierarchy. There are difficulties with the very definition of a Catholic ethos, as was acknowledged by James Norman, of the Mater Dei Institute, when he set out to write a book on the subject.50 The absence of a common, uniform definition is also confirmed by an analysis of the different documents produced by schools or by the Catholic teacher-training centres in Ireland, as well as by widely diverging interpretations of the Catholic or Christian ethos in the admissions policies of different Catholic schools (as we saw briefly in Chapter 6).51 The difficulty of coming up with a truly consensual vision of the Catholic ethos in schools as a system of shared values and defined missions, coupled with the heightened need felt by many to give clear expression to this ethos for the reasons mentioned above, largely explains why Catholic educationalists have devoted significant time and energy to this issue. The social developments of the 1980s and 1990s, along with the internal reflection spurred on by the Second Vatican Council, have led to a re-examination

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of the concept of the Catholic school, a re-examination that was also made necessary by the steep decline in religious vocations and hence in the number of priests and members of religious orders who could be directly involved in the system.52 This effort of introspection is an ongoing one, as the number of collective works on the topic since the late 1990s in Ireland amply illustrates.53 In his own contribution to the debate on the future of the Irish school system in 2005, Kevin Williams envisaged the creation of primary schools along the model of existing community schools at secondary level. He contended that such a development could be an interesting option, provided their management structures included the Churches. Williams even imagined that the spirit of a Christian education could find authentic expression in such schools.54 In his argumentation he referred to the fact that a number of religious people themselves put into question the claim of the Church to control the school system in Ireland, the latter actually questioning the correspondence between Catholic control and management on the one hand and a Catholic ethos on the other hand and insisting on the need to communicate the Christian vision in a much more profound and personal way.55 Such views seem to be in stark contrast with the promotional approach chosen by the authors of Why Send Your Child to a Catholic School, published by Veritas in 2013. Beyond the various attempts at redefining the values and missions of the Catholic school, most Catholic authors now contend that it is or should be ‘inclusive’ by its very nature. In her article on ‘inter-faith education in Irish Catholic primary schools’, Patricia Kieran, of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, expressed concern about the dangers of too partial or one-sided a form of religious education in Catholic schools. She contended that there was a need to draw from the teachings of Nostra Ætate, the declaration on relations between the Church and non-Christian religions of 28 October 1965, to point out to all Catholics that ‘the Church rejects, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men [sic], or harassment of them, because of their race, colour, condition of life, or religion’.56 Catholic priests involved in the management of schools have repeatedly insisted that Catholic schools are indeed inclusive and tolerant, while also rejecting calls for a common religious curriculum at primary level.57 In his speech at the annual meeting of the CPSMA in 2004, the Association’s General Secretary, Dan O’Connor, declared that ‘Catholic schools in Ireland and in Europe had always been places where people of other faiths and no faith were welcome’.58 In this respect, it should be acknowledged that religious instruction textbooks have indeed changed dramatically since the not-sodistant time when people who had not been baptised or who did not believe in Jesus Christ were described as ‘infidels’ and doomed to eternal damnation and the fires of Hell.59 In the same speech, O’Connor insisted that there were many excellent examples of good practice in the way Catholic primary schools dealt with pupils of other religions and thus no need for Catholic primary schools to change or dilute their ethos in any way.

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In a memorandum addressed to Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe in September 2008, Catholic Church representatives spoke out against a media coverage that in their opinion wrongfully represented non-denominational and multi-denominational systems ‘as if they were pioneering inclusion’.60 In a pastoral letter on the future of Catholic education in Ireland in the same year, the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference emphasised the values of tolerance and inclusion of Catholic education and declared, The protection of a Catholic school’s ethos is both a moral duty and a legal responsibility of the Bishop as Patron/Trustee, but this is not in conflict with the need to value the freedom of conscience and proper role of each member of the school community.61

One might wish that this declaration had been supported by a demonstration of the absence of conflict between these two propositions, all the more so as the chosen formulation suggests that such a conflict might actually exist. In the absence of any attempt at justifying it, such a declaration remains a gratuitous statement. A similar underlying contradiction may be found in more isolated assertions such as that of a school head quoted in the Irish Times in 2007: ‘[New school principal] Ms Lowe said that although Scoil Choilm would have a Catholic ethos it would provide an inclusive form of education.’62 In addition, the use of the verb ‘to value’ in the previous quotation suggests a soft line towards individual freedom of conscience, which may be ‘valued’ or perhaps tolerated rather than respected as a fundamental right. In this particular instance, it is also unclear whether the phrase ‘each member of the school community’ actually includes the children themselves rather than just the teachers. This seems unlikely given the mention of the ‘proper role’ of each member, which does not seem adapted for pupils here. Cultural diversity is often said to be ‘valued’ not only in declarations or publications by the church hierarchy and Catholic educationalists but also in official documents from the Department of Education, but ‘valuing’ or appreciating others does not necessarily entail affording them equal respect. The Catholic hierarchy has made many similar declarations over the past decade, often using Monsignor James Cassin, Executive Secretary of the Irish Bishops’ Conference’s Education Commission, as their mouthpiece. In a piece published by the Irish Times in 2004, Cassin wrote, ‘Over the generations, Catholic schools have maintained a schooling system that is open and welcoming, while making no apology for the observance of the core tenets of the Catholic faith and practice.’63 In 2006, he said that ‘Catholic schools were seen sometimes “as almost sectarian” but [that] their ethos meant they had to be welcoming to people of other traditions.’64 The Catholic schools’ role in ‘passing on the faith’ has been reasserted many times and their religious orientation put into writing as a fundamental requirement in the deeds of trust.65 The definition of inclusion favoured by Catholic educationalists may be described as a weak one in that it appears compatible with the maintenance of unequal power relationships. The notion of ‘generous dialogue’, as in the bishops’

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pastoral letter of 2008, only serves to reinforce this kind of implication.66 At best, the Church’s official discourse of inclusiveness and openness remains a discourse of tolerance, or toleration, which accepts or takes for granted the continued subordination of minority cultures or religions, in support of a system where ‘the values, practices and perspectives of the dominant group … are [still] expressed as cultural and institutional norms’.67 The Catholic hierarchy’s recent strategy of relative withdrawal is revealing of the intrinsic limitations of its discourse on the ‘inclusive’ Catholic ethos, since it is based at least partly on the idea that a system allowing for a variety of school types would lead to a reduction in the number of non-Catholic children attending Catholic schools, in turn ‘allowing the specifically Catholic school to be more distinctively Catholic’, as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin put it in a speech at Dublin City University in 2006.68 The main focus here has been on Catholic schools because of their particular weight in the system, but the position of Protestant schools does not appear to be fundamentally different as far as managing religious diversity is concerned. Anne Lodge’s survey of parents of ‘minority beliefs’ shows that there is an ongoing debate as to the relative merits of Catholic and Protestant schools in terms of respect for non-Christians, Protestant schools often being presented as more tolerant.69 Historically, however, the minority status of these schools in the Irish Republic has led church representatives and school managers to act to preserve the high proportion of children from Protestant backgrounds that was deemed to be necessary for their own survival. While Catholic schools were usually called upon to act as state or public schools, there was no such pressure on Protestant school managers, who did not have to develop a similar discourse of inclusiveness as a result. In a reflection on the meaning of school ethos in 2000, Richard Clarke, Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare, explained that he preferred the concept of ‘faith-culture’ because it made the religious dimension explicit, while this dimension remained implicit in the more generic concept of ethos.70 He pointed to the right of Church of Ireland schools to assert their own ethos or ‘faith-culture’, according to Irish law and to their ‘deed of variation’, in the recruitment of employees as well as in their admissions policies ‘in descending order’.71 Similar questions might be asked of the ethos of Stratford National School and Stratford College in Dublin, although the situation and outlook are somewhat different from those of Protestant schools. All school children had Jewish backgrounds when the primary and secondary schools were founded, in the 1930s and 1950s respectively, but the size of the Jewish community (with parents wishing to send their children to a Jewish school) has since dwindled.72 The schools’ ethos is characterised as Jewish, ‘as defined by the Chief Rabbi of Ireland’, on their official websites (with no further explanation), and Jewish students are given explicit priority at enrolment, but both websites explain that the schools now ‘welcome those of all and no denominations’.73 Stratford National School is ‘proud that our enrolment consists of pupils from a wide range of religious and cultural backgrounds’,74 while in its list of admissions

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by order of priority, Stratford College specifies ‘pupils of multi-denominational schools’, after Jewish students and pupils related to Stratford schools in various ways but before ‘geographical proximity’.75 The two existing Muslim schools are in a reverse situation: given the recent increase in the Muslim population in the Republic of Ireland, they are in a position to cater only for students of Muslim backgrounds. To conclude on the specific situation of most Catholic schools as de-facto public schools in the Irish State: the vision of ‘inclusiveness’ that emerges from Catholic discourse on Catholic schools is that of a Catholic/Christian majority open to and tolerating ‘others’ but not one based on equality of status with full respect for each individual’s right to freedom of conscience and religion. Is a distinctive religious ethos a prerequisite for moral values in schools? A ‘characteristic spirit’ or ‘ethos’ is sometimes seen in Ireland as a set of cultural and moral prerequisites without which the Irish school system as a whole would somehow lose its soul. Church leaders especially have repeatedly expressed the fear of a moral or even ideological vacuum (already mentioned in Chapter 2) in the absence of specific religious values in schools. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has warned against the danger of an ‘ideological battle’ between politicians if the educational field was not occupied by the various religions, with the problematic twin assumptions that religious views do not have an ideological dimension and that curriculum contents are not already influenced by such considerations.76 Richard Clarke of the Church of Ireland, for his part, has wondered aloud about the possibility of an ‘ideology-free’ education in relation to the idea of a non-denominational or secular school system.77 As Louis O’Flaherty has noted, ‘the Catholic Church has been reluctant to accept the concept of civic or social morality … [regarding] the state as something second best.’78 While both Martin and Clarke chose to ignore or dismiss this concept of civic morality, it has been put forward as a potential alternative in the Irish educational field by Garret FiztGerald among others. In a speech addressed to members of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals in 2007, the former taoiseach insisted on the necessity for teachers to found their vision of education on ethical principles such as mutual respect and not on the recourse to a traditional authority seeking to impose its own rules.79 Billy Fitzpatrick of the TUI put into question the idea of intrinsically superior denominational/religious or Christian values, pointing out that the existing Irish public schools, i.e. up to recently the vocational schools, were for a long time almost the only ones that opposed student selection both in theory and in practice, contrary to a denominational sector that was more influenced by market forces and by social elitism than it would generally be prepared to admit.80 In his defence of common schools, Walter Feinberg, Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Illinois, rejects the idea upheld by

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‘communitarians’ – and to be found in the Irish Catholic hierarchy’s discourse on education – that the common school cannot constitute an acceptable basis from a moral viewpoint on the grounds that it is deemed to be indifferent to particular moral codes and thus likely to weaken the link from one generation to the next.81 It is this idea that has underpinned the development and defence of the notion of ethos with relation to different school types in the Irish State, in turn justifying the continued existence of separate schools with a mission to transmit specific sets of moral norms. For Feinberg, the idea that moral norms may only exist within distinct communal frameworks (or be ‘communally bounded’) is highly problematic in the context of a multicultural society. In education, this claim sets the communal interest over that of the child while simultaneously ignoring the fact that, in a liberal society, the freedom to assert communal identity exists within a wider context of democratic rights and responsibilities. Once members of a cultural community acknowledge that they are part of a multicultural society, then the communal interest cannot form the only basis through which education contributes to the formation of self.82

Feinberg identifies the responsibility of society to allow children autonomy in their choices and the right of children to this freedom as being among the democratic rights and responsibilities that should be respected by communities in a democratic society. In the sense that it gives precedence to democratic rights and responsibilities (including those of children) over communal ideological frameworks, such a vision indirectly echoes the writings of Émile Durkheim on moral education. As Roland Tormey put it in his discussion on the link between national identity and school history in Ireland, Durkheim considered that ‘identification with a national moral code could only be a step in the process of social and moral evolution, which would, by necessity, lead on to a broader self-identification with a human-rights-based morality that was the ultimate measure of citizenship.’83 British philosopher Stephen Law adopts a similar outlook to Feinberg’s in The War for Children’s Minds. He examines the issue of the more or less authoritarian or liberal approaches related to this or that ethos and of the relative importance given to the development of children’s ability to think by themselves. His view is that the debate in this respect lies not so much between believers on the one hand and non-believers or atheists on the other hand but rather between proponents of a liberal approach (in the sense of respect for individual freedom) and those who favour an authoritarian approach.84 Law insists that privileging the development of children’s autonomy of thought does not entail the absence of a value system informing school life or any kind of moral relativism.85 On the contrary, such autonomy of thought may be said to have definite advantages over an unthinking acceptance of ‘ready-made’ moral codes, to the extent that one may question the effects of the discrepancy between particular sets of traditional moral teachings and the reality and diversity of social mores in any given society on an individual’s moral compass and sense of moral coherence.

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At the same time, we have already alluded to the fact that it is the cultural, historically charged dimension of Irish Catholicism that has been influential in the perpetuation of the system rather than a religious discourse, strictly speaking. Members of the Irish Catholic Church may be said to be themselves influenced by this cultural, historical (rather than strictly religious) dimension, to the extent that the Church has also adapted its discourse to its political and socio-cultural environment. Desmond M.  Clarke has pointed out for example that in the USA the Catholic Church has long supported the separation between Church and State and that ‘the integration of state financing with religious schools is not the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church’ at an international level.86 Clarke thus describes the position of the Irish Church as regards the expectation of state funding of religious schools as ‘peculiarly conservative’, since ‘where political experience has been different, the Church has applied different standards’.87 A quote from an Irish teacher taken from a survey by Dympna Devine in 2004 points to the complex relationship between culture and religion in the Irish context. The teacher, looking for a solution to the conundrum in Irish education, asked, ‘Can we have Catholic multi-denominational multicultural schools?’88 Such a question also pointed to the difficulty of going beyond familiar frameworks to imagine potential alternative models. As we saw in Chapter  2, it was precisely in reaction to this difficulty to think in terms of alternative educational and citizenship values that Garret FitzGerald chose to celebrate the idea of civic republicanism when he addressed the Irish National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) in 2007. In his introductory speech to the Educate Together Ethos Conference in 2003, Ray Dooley, Chief Executive of the Irish Children’s Rights Alliance, sought to address some of the concerns people might have (in Ireland and elsewhere) about the notion of respect for children’s rights, some associating these with connotations of permissiveness or fearing that traditional customs and values might be abandoned as a result. He pointed out that children’s rights were much more of a set of rules and obligations than any kind of generalised free-for-all and that respect for children’s rights was in fact meant to encourage a restructuring around fundamental principles and values, far from excessive moral relativism.89 Following Feinberg as well as Durkheim, it is only by using this ‘human-rights-based morality’ or ethics as a founding principle that one may avoid both the narrow confines of communal codes and practices and the dangers of cultural and moral relativism. The use of the word ‘ethics’ helps distinguish Durkheim’s ‘human-rights-based morality’ from singular and specific moral codes or ‘ethoses’ (whether religious or professional). This distinction between ethics as a human-rights-based morality with a universal scope and specific moral codes is also to be found in Martine Abdallah-Pretceille’s work on intercultural education.90 In all these writings, this definition of ethics is seen as the necessary basis for a democratic social life that may be both common and diverse.

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An educational enterprise on such a basis would seek to enhance the capacity of children to think by themselves and make their own informed choices and would thus respect the right of children to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as set out in Article 14 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children of 1989. Within this context, one could argue that the concept of school ethos as it is understood in Ireland, with its insistence on the perpetuation of certain communal identities and interests, has in fact become an obstacle to the development of a genuinely ethical approach of education based on children’s rights and democratic principles in the Irish State. Somewhat paradoxically, the new Irish citizenship education curriculum, with its emphasis not only on human rights and equality but also on active and project-based learning methodologies, points precisely to such a development. Educate Together schools: counter-example and paradox For a long time, the small network of Educate Together schools had to rely on the efforts of supportive parents. From 1995, the association was able to open a permanent office and to hire a coordinator thanks to a private donor. In 1998, Educate Together became a private company with charitable status, which facilitated the organisation of Educate Together schools under the patronage of this national company.91 A chief executive officer (since 2002) works with a board of directors mostly made up of members coming from Educate Together schools and serving in a voluntary capacity, with annual general meetings informing the decision-making process. The Education Act of 1998 gave patrons a legal right to impose their own vision or ethos on their schools. Educate Together, like religious patrons, was expected to formulate a specific ethos or line of conduct for Educate Together schools: the ‘fundamental legal concept of Educate Together’s patronage’ is that each Educate Together school’s board of management ‘is bound to operate a school that delivers equality of access and esteem to all children, irrespective of their social, cultural and religious backgrounds’.92 As we saw in Chapter 4, the term ‘multi-denominational’ is widely used to describe them, but it was actually imposed on Educate Together schools by the Department of Education, to fit in with their own conception of the education system. The Educate Together charter specifies that the term should be understood in the wider sense of equality or access and respect for all children, regardless of their origins or background and not only in terms of recognition and respect for the diversity of religious opinions their parents may have. Not only is the term too narrow to define the Educate Together approach adequately, but ‘denominations’ originally referred only to the different branches of the Christian Church and now even the more current meaning points to the various religions, excluding the absence of religion. ‘Multi-denominational’ is a problematic word as regards Educate Together schools not only because it seems to define children according to denomination to start with but also

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because it cannot encompass other core principles of the Educate Together approach as defined in their charter: Co-educational and committed to encouraging all children to explore their full range of abilities and opportunities. Boys and girls learn and socialize together in the school environment. This approach delivers the best educational and social development for children. Child-centred in their approach to education. Democratically run with active participation by parents in the daily life of the school, whilst positively affirming the professional role of the teachers.93

Educate Together recognise that they are not alone in upholding child-centredness and co-educationalism in Irish primary education and thus claim that their distinctiveness derives mainly from their culturally inclusive and democratic outlook or ‘ethos’. While Educate Together have strived to develop an outlook based on equality and inclusiveness in schools, they have regularly been accused of contributing to social segregation, along with all-Irish schools, because they make it possible for some parents to avoid the local school.94 At the same time, such potential adverse effects cannot be said to be a consequence of their ethos, which rejects all forms of discrimination, unlike religious schools. In this respect, the Educate Together approach is even more complete than that of the Equality Authority to the extent that the latter’s missions do not include fighting against social discrimination or social inequalities. There are significant differences between Educate Together schools in terms of school population make-up, but these are the result of the combined effect of the structural characteristics of the education system and of contrasting urban realities and not of any deliberate selection policy. At the same time, the position of Educate Together is a paradoxical one, since they have accepted a place in the Irish education system that has led them to agree to play by the existing rules of continuing differentiation and segregation. After explaining that Educate Together schools are part of the ‘national’ system just like Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish schools and operate the same National Curriculum, the authors of the What Is an Educate Together School? booklet (2006) stress ‘What makes an Educate Together school different’, namely their ethos.95 While Educate Together representatives are aware of this paradox, they might still be said to be its victims: in the conclusion to the same document, the authors specify: ‘we do not see our future as an exclusive or niche provider in the Irish system’. At the same time, they claim that they ‘see the sector as part of a complementary development, providing choice where there has been no choice’.96 Even if Educate Together schools are aimed at welcoming all children equally, their inscription within the existing system and their minority status have led Educate Together representatives to adopt a similar niche strategy to that of other private interest groups in their efforts to secure their own development, although their ambitions are now national (and even international, with the opening of the first Educate Together school

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in England in 2014). The refusal to accept the notion of a geographic catchment area for the new Educate Together secondary-level schools is a case in point.97 In the name of tolerance towards other school types and of respect for difference, Educate Together schools’ proponents, keen as they are to preserve and develop their model, have tended to appropriate the democratic outlook and respect for children’s rights as their own trademark or ‘ethos’, even while acknowledging that many of these ideas are also implemented (to a point) in other schools in Ireland and abroad. This paradox seems to be a logical consequence of their acceptance of the differentiating ideology conveyed by the notion of ‘ethos’ and imposed by the Irish State itself, following the views of church representatives. As a result, rather than explicitly putting into question the shortcomings of the state-funded education system as a whole in the name of the democratic principles they defend, in their attempt to define Educate Together schools in the 2006 booklet, Educate Together proponents implicitly accepted that other schools in the system might still be legitimately less ‘inclusive’, less ‘democratic’ and less respectful of children’s rights than their own. By insisting that they were ‘committed to work with other providers to bring the structure of primary education into balance with the needs of our rapidly changing society and to address the human rights of children, parents and teachers’, they deliberately ignored the reason for the creation of Educate Together schools in the first place, namely the fact that religious ‘education providers’ did not respect certain human rights and democratic principles.98 This continuing ambivalence may indirectly  – and again paradoxically  – contribute to the whole system’s structural inertia, even if Educate Together supporters have also repeatedly defended those principles nationally. In recent years, they have become more vocal in expressing disapproval over continuing religious discrimination in general, as they did with reference to the School Admissions’ Bill in April 2015.99 This complex position may be partly explained by another aspect of the Educate Together movement’s beginnings. While its initiators might have wished to launch a national movement for common schools, as the name they chose suggests, they decided to start locally, with one school, and then another, for their own children and those of like-minded parents. Áine Hyland, who was one of the founders of the first school, the Dalkey School Project in south County Dublin, in 1978, explains that they decided to create at least one school as an experiment rather than to try and change the whole system, which in their eyes would have only postponed any real change.100 Such a choice was understandable, and probably inevitable, given the historical, political and social context of the 1970s in the Republic of Ireland. At the time, many considered the attempt to create a school along democratic, all-inclusive principles as a radical, even subversive act, and the founders found themselves under concerted attacks locally.101 However, this choice destined these new schools to be only an option among others. Áine Hyland explains that the founding

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parents did not conceive of this new schooling experiment as a revolutionary move. Denis O’Sullivan confirms her analysis when he underlines that the ‘multi-denominational’ movement (as it eventually became called), while it could be considered transgressive from an educational viewpoint, did not truly perturb the cultural order.102 The founders were first and foremost parents who wanted a common school for their children. This gave them the determination to bring the project to fruition, but it was also probably a founding flaw in the movement itself, since it put the right of parents to choose a school for their child before the right of children to a common, non-discriminatory education (diversity of schools before diversity in schools), even though Educate Together parents also supported the latter. Given the daunting obstacles put on the path of Educate Together schools by the Irish State in the first two decades, founding parents had to have both determination and cultural and financial capital or at least the wherewithal to gather the necessary funds. Even if most Educate Together schools now have a socially and culturally mixed school population, which was always one of their main aims, for a long time their creation depended on the ability of relatively well-off parents to organise collectively for their children’s education. That it was very difficult or even impossible for parents who did not have the same means at their disposal to envisage opening a school of this type is more an indication of how the system itself bred social injustice than of how elitist Educate Together founders supposedly were.103 The alternative syllabus of ‘ethical education’ called ‘Learn Together’ was briefly mentioned in Chapter 4. It aims at giving children an insight into the main religious and philosophical visions in the world (teaching about religions and beliefs) and cannot be equated to any form of religious instruction. At the same time, Anne Lodge has noted the possible existence of a discrepancy between principles and reality in Educate Together schools as a result of the fact that the majority of teachers still have a Catholic cultural background and were trained in Catholic teacher-training centres. To illustrate this, she quotes a Buddhist parent whose child was enrolled in an Educate Together school:  ‘Christianity is the prevailing ethos even in multi-denominational schools due to the teachers’ own cultural backgrounds. There is a certain way of looking at the world – it doesn’t occur to people to ask questions.’104 In their effort to be truly inclusive, Educate Together school heads and teachers generally try to go beyond the ‘Learn Together’ syllabus by giving equal recognition to the religious groups the children are seen as belonging to through their parents. On the one hand these efforts are meant to be a way of respecting the parents’ religious diversity by giving substance to the so-called ‘multi-denominational’ character of the schools and, on the other hand, they can be seen as the schools’ response to religious criticism on the supposed absence of spiritual content and direction in non-denominational schools. The difficulties encountered in this quest for equal recognition of the children’s different backgrounds are revealing of lingering issues, however:  as many Educate Together schools have tried to mark the main religious celebrations as

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part of the school year, they have found themselves in a quandary as to how to include children with no religious backgrounds, with some even choosing to adopt a Darwin Day for these children (inspired by the American Humanist Association’s call for an International Darwin Day).105 The general approach shows a continuing tendency to perceive children as necessarily followers of their parents’ religion (or absence of religion). The absence of any festival for children with no religious background was seen by some school heads and teachers as a problem in terms of equal status and recognition, hence the idea of ‘Darwin Day’, even though such a choice may be considered problematic in itself.106 It came from a need felt by the school heads and teachers to offer, but also to impose, a degree of visibility to those children rather than from any collective wish by non-religious parents to celebrate Darwin as a group. In this way, even in Educate Together schools, the wish to ensure equality of status between the parents’ different religious opinions has tended to take precedence over respect for the children’s right to freedom of conscience and religion, this in spite of the fact that parents are not asked to specify their child’s religious affiliation at enrolment in those schools. Conclusion: children’s rights and religious diversity – the case for philosophy in schools Despite their attachment to democratic principles (the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 is often displayed on Educate Together school walls) and child-centred education, such an outlook on the part of members of Educate Together is hardly surprising within the Irish context. Indeed, most Irish sociologists of education, while they often refer to the issue of children’s rights in relation to other topics, generally focus first and foremost on group religious allegiances (often described as majority or minority opinions) and ‘family’ religious opinions (i.e. those that parents might wish to transmit to their children) in their analyses on religion and equality in schools. They rarely if ever explicitly tackle the issue of a possible distinction between parents and children, and hence between individuals with their own conscience and developing opinions, in this regard. This dominant perspective seems at odds with their very real efforts to put into question the perception of the child as a passive recipient of dominant culture put forward by traditional theories of socialisation and to reclaim the children’s voices by analysing their ability to construct their own identities and social worlds.107 Children’s ‘religious belonging’ is often dealt with as if it was an immutable feature, like gender or sexual orientation, for example. Most analyses by Irish educationalists insist more on respect for ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ – as if religious differences between children were predetermined, unchanging categories – than on the development of children’s ability to make their own choices in an informed manner. This perspective is far from confined to Ireland: in a tentative global study on the implementation process of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Gerison Lansdown notes that it is still widely shared internationally and points

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it out as one of the factors hindering further progress.108 The Convention sees parents, and adults more generally, as guides who should accompany children in the development of their ability to take decisions by themselves, as they gradually grow in maturity and understanding. This progressive philosophy is at odds with dominant cultural traditions in the area of education in many countries, where the child is still perceived as a passive receptacle for adult wisdom and teachings.109 Lansdown acknowledges that the Convention puts into question a certain educational orthodoxy and highlights the tensions between the objectives of governments, parents and children in education, but he argues that respect for children’s human rights, by encouraging the development of a truly child-centred education, can only be beneficial not only to each child or person individually but also for society as a whole.110 Children are bound to be influenced by their family, social and cultural environment, but there should be a distinction between social, cultural or even religious initiation and forms of indoctrination that are authoritarian by nature and that imply a deliberate restriction of children’s capacity for autonomous choice.111 Such indoctrination may take different forms or come from different sources: some authors, for example, refer to the influence of the consumerist ‘dogma’ and to the necessity of equipping children with a critical consciousness that may help them resist it.112 In Ireland, Dympna Devine in particular has focused on the putting into practice of children’s citizenship in schools and on the necessary conditions for the development of a democratic school experience for children beyond citizenship education. In this perspective, she refers to authors who have explored the means by which adults may accompany children towards independence and specifically mentions the emerging movement of philosophy with children that focuses on their critical abilities and on their active participation in their own learning process.113 This philosophical approach questions the legitimacy of projecting a single religious discourse on children, regardless of where that discourse might come from. Stephen Law also mentions several examples of experiments centred on philosophy teaching for children. These have demonstrated that even young children can think in a philosophical way (understood in a wide sense) and learn to develop a critical reflection, to question their own assumptions, to build a rational argumentation and to understand others’ viewpoints.114 This approach is inherently consistent with the principles of intercultural education that have begun to be introduced in Irish schools. Imagining and promoting a form of education and an educational framework that respect the child as a human being and give them the means to develop as a person and to make their own choices seems the best way to respect both the rights of children and the diversity of religious opinions in society. The teaching of philosophy includes tools for knowledge and critical reflection; it aims at developing the ability to think independently and thus ultimately freedom of thought. As both Devine and Law point out, the methods and practices of philosophy adapted to children are the subject of a developing international reflection. If the teaching of philosophy has long existed in several European countries (it is

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compulsory in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, optional in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden among others), if not in Ireland or the UK, it is often confined to the last year(s) of secondary schooling, which is hardly ideal.115 It should be possible to envisage its development throughout school, within a favourable educational framework. In 2013, President Michael D. Higgins called for the teaching of philosophy in Irish schools, ‘which could facilitate the fostering of an ethical consciousness in our fellow citizens’.116 At the end of 2014, Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan announced a plan to introduce a short course in philosophical ‘concepts and ideas’ at junior cycle in the Irish State.117 While these are interesting developments, the question remains of course of the impact and coherence of such a course within the current Irish education system.118 Notes 1 Mawhinney, Freedom of Religion and Schools. 2 Lynch and Lodge, Equality and Power in Schools; Deegan et al., Primary Voices; Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School. 3 Amendment of section 37 of Act of 1998 in Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2015. 4 Áine Hyland, ‘School Culture and Ethos: The Southern Experience’, in Catherine Furlong and Luke Monahan (eds), School Culture and Ethos:  Cracking the Code (Dublin: Marino Institute of Education, 2000), p. 22. 5 Education Act, 1998, section 15.2.b. 6 Ó Buachalla, Education Policy in Twentieth Century Ireland. 7 Kevin Williams, ‘Religious Ethos and State Schools’, Doctrine and Life, 42 (1992), 561–70. Doctrine and Life is published by Dominican Publications. 8 Joint Submission from the Irish Bishops and the Conference of Major Religious Superiors (Dublin, 1993), p. 4; quoted in O’Flaherty, ‘Religious Control of Schooling’, p. 68. 9 Furlong and Monahan, School Culture and Ethos, p. xxi. 10 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education. 11 Inglis, Moral Monopoly; ‘Catholic Church, Religious Capital’, pp. 43–70; McDonagh, ‘Church–State Relations’, p. 63. 12 Ó Loingsigh (former president of the INTO), ‘Intercultural Education and the School Ethos’, p. 120. 13 The Cambridge Dictionary (2008 edition) gives the following definition of ethos, which is perhaps closer to the implicit understanding of the term in the Irish educational context: ‘The set of beliefs, ideas, etc. about social behaviour and relationships of a person or a group’; while the definition to be found in the 2003 edition of the Collins Dictionary explicitly goes back to the Greek etymology (meaning habit or custom), with ‘the distinctive character, spirit and attitudes of a people, culture, era, etc.’. 14 O’Flaherty, ‘Religious Control of Schooling’, p. 68. 15 O’Flaherty, ‘Religious Control of Schooling’, p. 68. 16 Timothy Murphy, ‘Democratic Schooling Practices in the Republic of Ireland: The Gaps between the Rhetoric and Reality’, Irish Educational Studies, 27:1 (2008), 29–39, at p. 32. 17 Murphy, ‘Democratic Schooling Practices’, p. 33. In his article, Murphy draws from Paulo Freire and Maxine Green’s work on education for democracy.

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18 INTO, Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System, p. 10. 19 INTO, Newcomer Children in the Primary Education System, p. 17. 20 Education Act 1998, Section 15.2.e. 21 Department of Education and Science, Information Booklet for Schools on Asylum Seekers (2000), p. 12 (my italics). 22 Confidential memorandum quoted in Walshe, ‘Church Demands Key Role in New Secondary Schools’. 23 Quoted in O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 216. 24 Devine et al., ‘Activating Voices through Practice’, p. 246. 25 Devine et al., ‘Activating Voices’, p. 247. 26 Devine et al., ‘Activating Voices’, pp. 247–8. 27 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 32. 28 Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1990); quoted in Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 32; Lynch and Lodge, Equality and Power in Schools, pp. 131–45. 29 ‘The key issues in planning the physical environment include […] ensuring that all children irrespective of their colour, ethnic group, or ability can feel at home and represented within the school’. NCCA, Intercultural Education in the Primary School, p. 34. 30 ‘[E]‌ntre différence et égalité, commun et singularité’; ‘penser la pluralité culturelle et la reconnaissance non pas entre des identités culturelles figées mais sous forme de processus permanents de constitution réciproque du commun et des singularités culturelles’, Olivier Voirol, ‘Pluralité culturelle et démocratie chez John Dewey’, Hermès, 51 (2008), 23–8 (my translation). 31 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage Books, 1993). 32 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 32. 33 Maxine Jones, ‘Parenthood and the Art of Cowardice’, Sunday Tribune (9 June 1996); quoted in Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Schools’, p. 42. 34 David Alvey, Irish Education: The Case for Secular Reform (Dublin: Church and State Books and Athol Books, 1991); Campaign to Separate Church and State, Intolerance in the Irish School System:  Experiences of Parents and Multidenominational Groups (Bray: Campaign to Separate Church and State, 1993). 35 Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio 1 (12 November 2009). 36 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 32. 37 INTO and the Equality Authority, The Inclusive School, p. 44. 38 Lodge and Lynch, Diversity at School, pp. 40–1. 39 Carmel Crimmins, ‘Double Lives for Gay Teachers in Ireland’, Reuters.com (21 December 2011); ‘In Your Words: Being a Gay Teacher in Ireland’, TheJournal.ie (14 September 2014). 40 Ruairi Quinn’s speech at the INTO’s annual conference (2 April 2013), available at www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/Speeches/2013-Speeches/SP-%202013-%20 04-%2002.html (accessed 25 May 2015). 41 INTO, Employment Equality Acts, 1998 and 2011  – INTO Submission in Relation to Section 37(1), November 2013, available at www.into.ie/ROI/Publications/ INTOSubmissions/Submission_S371.pdf (accessed 2 June 2015). 42 Seán Flynn, ‘Opportunities  – and Dangers  – in Shake-up of Primary Education’, Irish Times (25 September 2007). 43 Joe Humphreys, ‘Schools Have Rights on Ethos, Says Priest’, Irish Times (21 January 2015).

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44 Michael Drumm, quoted in Humphreys, ‘Schools Have Rights on Ethos, Says Priest’. 45 Ó Loingsigh, ‘Barriers to Intercultural Education’, p. 230. 46 Fitzpatrick, ‘School Culture and Ethos: A Teachers’ Union of Ireland Perspective’, p. 238. 47 Mary Hanafin, quoted in Elaine Edwards, ‘State to Open Pilot Non-religious Schools’, Irish Times (13 December 2007). 48 ‘Multi-belief ’ is the term employed on the umbrella website for Community National Schools. See www.cns.ie/ (accessed 2 June 2015). 49 Presentation of ‘Goodness Me Goodness You’ on Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board website (accessed 2 June 2015). 50 Norman, Ethos and Education in Ireland. 51 See, for example, the overview of projects on the Catholic school (‘The Catholic School Project’) and on the culture and ethos of these schools (‘School Culture and Ethos Project’) in the President’s Report 2007 (Dublin:  Marino Institute of Education, 2007), pp. 37 and 41. 52 Patricia Kieran focuses on the new spirit of openness and dialogue encouraged by Vatican II in the educational field in ‘Promoting Truth?’, pp. 120–1. 53 Apart from James Norman’s work quoted above, see Maura Hyland (ed.), Why Send Your Child to a Catholic School? (Dublin:  Veritas, 2013); Anne Hession and Patricia Kieran, Children, Catholicism and Religious Education (Dublin:  Veritas, 2005); Ned Prendergast and Luke Monahan (eds), Reimagining the Catholic School (Dublin:  Veritas, 2003); John P.  M. Feheney (ed.), From Ideal to Action:  The Inner Nature of a Catholic School (Dublin:  Veritas, 1998); Pádraig Hogan and Kevin Williams (eds), The Future of Religion in Irish Education (Dublin: Veritas, 1997). 54 Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 104. 55 Those reflections are taken up in Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950:  The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin:  Gill & Macmillan, 2004), pp. 173–4; quoted in Williams, Faith and the Nation, p. 104. 56 Nostra Ætate (28 October 1965), paragraph 5; quoted in Kieran, ‘Promoting Truth?’, p. 122. 57 Again in the Catholic Schools’ Partnership’s publication, Catholic Primary Schools in a Changing Ireland: Sharing Good Practice on Inclusion of All Pupils (March 2015); John Walshe, ‘School Chiefs Slam Plan for Common Religious Curriculum’, Irish Independent (8 March 2004). 58 Walshe, ‘School Chiefs Slam Plan’. 59 Patricia Kieran quotes from catechism textbooks published in Dublin and London at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kieran, ‘Promoting Truth?’, p. 121. 60 Quoted in Walshe, ‘Church Demands Key Role in New Secondary Schools’. 61 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Pastoral Letter, p. 8. 62 Fiona Gartland, ‘Happy Pupils on First Day of Class at New School Set Up Speedily’, Irish Times (4 September 2007). 63 James Cassin, ‘Preserving the Catholic Ethos in a Secular State’s Schools’, Irish Times (11 October 2004). 64 Patsy McGarry, ‘Schools Pass on the Faith Says Bishop’, Irish Times (31 January 2006). 65 McGarry, ‘Schools Pass on the Faith Says Bishop’. 66 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Pastoral Letter, p. 8. 67 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 32. 68 Martin, ‘Changing Society, Changing Schools’. 69 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’.

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70 Clarke, ‘On Faith, Culture and Giant Pandas’, p. 165. 71 Clarke, ‘On Faith, Culture and Giant Pandas’, p. 168. 72 Stratford College’s Admissions Policy, available at www.stratfordcollege.ie/content/files/Stratford_College_Admissions_Policy_December_2012.pdf (accessed 15 June 2015). 73 Stratford College’s Admissions Policy 74 Stratford National School’s ‘History’ page, available at www.stratfordns.ie/history. html (accessed 15 June 2015). 75 Stratford College’s Admissions Policy. 76 Martin, ‘Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs’. 77 Clarke, ‘On Faith, Culture and Giant Pandas’, p. 164. 78 Louis O’Flaherty, ‘Catholic Church Influence in Second-Level Schools’, in Noel Ward and Triona Dooney (eds), Irish Education for the 21st Century (Cork: Oak Tree Press, 1999); quoted in Fitzpatrick, ‘School Culture and Ethos’, p. 236. 79 FitzGerald, ‘Civic Republicanism’, pp. 29–43. 80 Fitzpatrick, ‘School Culture and Ethos’, pp. 234–6. 81 Quoted in Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, p. 151. 82 Gallagher, Education in Divided Societies, p. 151. 83 Tormey, ‘The Construction of National Identity’, p. 314. 84 Stephen Law, The War for Children’s Minds (London and New  York:  Routledge, 2006), p. 23. 85 Law, The War for Children’s Minds, pp. 90–107. 86 Clarke, Church and State, p. 225. 87 Clarke, Church and State, p. 225. 88 Devine, ‘Making the Difference’, in INTO, Intercultural Education in the Primary School (Dublin: INTO, 2004), p. 41. 89 Dooley, ‘Cherishing Children’s Rights’. 90 Abdallah-Pretceille, L’Éducation interculturelle, p. 73. 91 Educate Together ‘History’ page, available at www.educatetogether.ie/about/history (accessed 5 June 2015). 92 Educate Together, What Is an Educate Together School? rev. edn (Dublin:  Educate Together, 2006), p. 4. 93 Educate Together ‘Core Principles’ page, available at www.educatetogether.ie/ about/core-principles (accessed 5 June 2015). 94 Ciaran Sugrue, ‘Power-Partnerships and the Restructuring of Irish Primary Education’, paper at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association, 24–8 April 2000; quoted in O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, p. 203. 95 Educate Together, What Is an Educate Together School?, p. 3. 96 Educate Together, What Is an Educate Together School?, p. 18. 97 Kitty Holland, ‘Educate Together Principals Seek Change to Admissions Policy’, Irish Times (26 August 2015). 98 Holland, ‘Educate Together Principals Seek Change to Admissions Policy’. 99 Educate Together News Release, ‘Draft Admissions Bill Highlights the Need for National Network of Educate Together Schools’, 8 April 2015, available at www. educatetogether.ie/media/national-news/draft-admissions-bill (accessed 6 June 2015); Paul Rowe (Educate Together CEO), ‘Equality of Access and Equality of Esteem’, Public Affairs Ireland, 23 June 2015, available at www.publicaffairsireland. com/news/1787-equality-of-access-and-equality-of-esteem (accessed 25 June 2015).

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100 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Schools’, p. 35. 101 Hyland, ‘Multi-denominational Schools’, pp. 36–7. 102 O’Sullivan, Cultural Politics and Irish Education, pp. 200–1. 103 Yvonne Healy, ‘Multi-denominational Education:  Here to Stay’, Irish Times (16 April 1996). 104 Lodge, ‘Denial, Tolerance or Recognition of Difference?’, p. 28. 105 See website of the movement for an International Darwin Day, www.darwinday. org. 106 This collective reflection was notably given expression at a seminar on the ethos of Educate Together schools that I attended in 2008. 107 Dympna Devine quotes several works that put into question those traditional theories in Children, Power and Schooling, pp. 4–5. 108 Gerison Lansdown, ‘Progress in Implementing the Rights in the Convention:  Factors Helping and Hindering the Process’, in Stuart Hart, Cynthia Price Cohen, Martha Farrell Erickson and Målfrid Flekkøy (eds), Children’s Rights in Education (London:  Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), pp. 37–59, at pp. 48–51. 109 Lansdown, ‘Progress in Implementing the Rights in the Convention’, p. 51. 110 Lansdown, ‘Progress in Implementing the Rights in the Convention’, p. 51. 111 F. Clark Power, Ann Marie R. Power, Brenda Light Bredemeier and David Light, ‘Democratic Education and Children’s Rights’, in Stuart Hart, Cynthia Price Cohen, Martha Farrell Erickson and Målfrid Flekkøy (eds), Children’s Rights in Education (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), pp. 98–118, at p. 100. 112 Power et al., ‘Democratic Education and Children’s Rights’, pp. 100–1. 113 Devine, Children, Power and Schooling, pp. 144–5. 114 Law, The War for Children’s Minds, pp. 35–9. 115 The website of the International Association of Philosophy Teachers gives an overview of philosophy-teaching in Europe. See www.aipph.eu/philosophy-ineurope (accessed 5 June 2015). 116 Address by President Michael D.  Higgins at Dublin City University, ‘Towards an Ethical Economy’, 6 September 2013. See summary, quotes and video link at www.dcu.ie/news/2013/sept/s0913b.shtml (accessed 5 June 2015). 117 Joe Humphreys, ‘O’Sullivan Signals Philosophy to Be Taught in Schools’, Irish Times (30 December 2014). 118 Joe Humphreys, ‘Unthinkable:  Should Children Be Encouraged to Doubt?’, Irish Times (19 May 2015).

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Gordian knot and republican solution There is now an obvious contradiction in the Republic of Ireland between new teaching contents that strive to take into account changing Irish realities and to open paths for social and cultural reconfiguration  – with the citizenship education curriculum and guidelines for intercultural education in particular – and educational structures inherited from the past that privilege communal interests over equal rights. The Fine Gael–Labour coalition in government between 2011 and 2016 first seemed ready to tackle the near-monopoly of the Catholic Church at primary level, but change has been very limited up to now, and religious segregation (and discrimination) is still accepted as a feature of the Irish state-funded school system and has even been replicated within the new community primary schools despite warnings from the NCCA against this government decision in 2008.1 In other words, the efforts of many teachers, educationalists and university lecturers involved in the development of school curricula through the NCCA have been supported by former and current governments in the name of social cohesion and of the multicultural present and future of Irish society, but these efforts have been undermined by the same governments through their refusal to effect the corresponding structural changes. The crux of the matter lies in the privileged place the Catholic Church still enjoys in the state-funded education system, in the name of respect for past arrangements between Church and State in education and for a ‘majority’ right to cultural and religious domination. Such a right is in complete contradiction with principles of democracy and equal citizenship that Irish political leaders claim as their own in the name of their republican ideals. Beyond the issue of the overall place of cultural and religious Catholicism, the current denominational structure of the Irish education system, with the legal imposition of particular religious orientations in schools, runs contrary to the new educational methods founded on intercultural and child-centred principles that have made some headway in Irish schools. The most telling illustration is probably the fact that religion classes and religious rituals in

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denominational schools have remained largely unaffected by intercultural principles, even though these are now supposed to inform school life across the board. Broadly speaking, the treatment of religion might be described as a major blind spot or stumbling block for children’s citizenship in the vast majority of Irish schools, even the new state community primary schools. The place accorded to particular religious authorities and religions in the public space of schools necessarily results in communal hierarchies that undermine the equality of status that all children should enjoy in a democratic society. This contradiction is a mark of the social and political tensions that stem from the profound socio-cultural changes of the past thirty years. It points to the persistent difficulty on the part of the Irish political mainstream to rethink republicanism as a political concept at the heart of the Irish State and go back to its foundations, long buried under the nationalist assertion of an exclusive Catholic/Christian identity. Until now, the Irish State has preserved its segregated, denominational education system for historical and political reasons that owe as much to a lingering vision of Irish identity as Christian (if not Catholic) as to a refusal to engage in a much-needed overhaul of the Irish Constitution, despite recommendations made by successive review groups, including the recent Constitutional Convention, since the mid 1990s.2 The current system fails to respect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion of both children and adults. It is a major obstacle to equal citizenship, an equality of status that is necessary to the development of true social inclusion in the full sense of the term, in an Irish society that cannot be reduced to an inherently exclusive, culturally homogenous identity any more, if it ever could be. The policy of limited diversification adopted by the Irish government since 2011, with the consent of the Catholic hierarchy and of other major interest groups in the system, maintains communal hierarchies and cannot constitute a satisfying response to the democratic requirement to uphold the fundamental rights of all children educated on Irish soil. On the contrary, and despite some recent moves to limit discrimination, this policy, far from developing a society all citizens could recognise themselves in equally, seems more likely to perpetuate and perhaps even worsen social fragmentation and inequalities between individuals and between groups in the Republic of Ireland. The considerable efforts of many Irish educationalists to reduce instances of discrimination and inequality, along with the progress made in terms of curriculum content, keep coming up against the structural foundations of the school system. As they help mitigate some of the effects of the system’s flaws, they might even paradoxically help perpetuate these flaws. Putting in place a national system of common schools founded on respect for democratic principles and on a conception of education that respects, among other things, children’s right to freedom of conscience and religion would obviously not be enough to guarantee full equality in principle, much less in practice. Even if formal education by itself cannot be expected to compensate for deep-rooted inequalities in Irish society, the setting up of such a system would at least go

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some way towards reducing those inequalities and towards developing a common sense of belonging as citizens, beyond group or communal identities, whether cultural, religious or social. The fears often expressed in Ireland as to the possible consequences of state control of education in such a scenario tend to ignore the fact that the Irish State or public bodies already control both curriculum development and many of the rules that all primary and secondary schools have to follow. Any such restructuring would have to occur with a clear democratic imperative however. At the same time, structural democratisation and a (re)claiming of the public sphere of state-funded schools would only be possible if it was initiated at national level to start with. As Ciaran Sugrue and Jim Gleeson have suggested, ‘seeking to change in fundamental ways the deep structures that are a historical legacy and a contemporary anachronism within the system’ and hence the existing power relations may even ‘release proscribed agency’ and open new spaces for experimentation and change.3 The private interests involved and the dominant political ideology in the Republic of Ireland have contributed to perpetuating most of the existing system and its inherent inequalities. An increasing number of Irish educationalists and commentators for their part have voiced the need for change and insisted on the ‘urgency to question the taken-for-granted structures of the education system’, spurred on more recently by the successive scandals that have brought discredit to the Irish Catholic Church since the revelations of the Ryan and Murphy reports in 2009.4 In successive opinion polls, the Irish population has expressed a readiness for such change. Ensuring equal citizenship is the responsibility of political leaders, an especially crucial one when it comes to the rights of the most vulnerable members of society. One can only hope that democratic debate, along with both an attachment to the local primary school and respect for the international conventions it has ratified, will eventually push the Irish State in this direction. International stakes and comparison The deliberate use of a theoretical and critical literature coming essentially from Ireland itself and from part of the English-speaking world (Britain, Canada and the USA) in this work makes it possible to show that school segregation, justified by communitarian models in the name of religious pluralism, has been challenged both within Ireland and internationally, and that these challenges are not the product of a strict, simplistic opposition between a communitarian, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ inspired model and a republican, French inspired one.5 It is indeed important to remember on the one hand that the ‘liberal vs communitarian’ debate is also internal to the English-speaking world and, on the other hand, that secularity, understood as combining separation between Church and State and respect for individual freedom of conscience and religion, is in no way a French preserve (despite a French tendency to appropriate it in the European context).

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In the same way, contemporary reflections on respect for human and cultural rights have had an international scope from the outset and their development has been founded on international declarations and conventions initiated or promoted by the UN. In this perspective, the Irish case is all the more interesting as the Irish State, though founded on a republican model, has also remained influenced by a British neighbour that up to recently privileged a multicultural vision with a strong communitarian angle in its dealings with socio-cultural minorities in all areas, including education policy.6 Beyond its immediate neighbours geographically, Irish society has been at the crossroads of European and North American influences (themselves mixed), in the field of intercultural education as in many other areas. No country may claim to have reached complete success in terms of respect for cultural and religious pluralism and the fight against all forms of discrimination in schools, while reflection on the practical implementation of children’s rights in education is still in its infancy in most democratic societies. Within this context, a restructuring of the Irish education system around the concept of the common school seems both necessary and insufficient. In dealing with the religious issue, education policies must strive to guarantee both freedom of conscience and recognition of the plurality of beliefs or opinions. The introduction of philosophy in schools from an early age would be a major step in this direction. Further implementation of the principles of intercultural education would also help Irish teachers to go beyond essentialist conceptions of culture that run the risk of trapping children within their respective (imagined or real) origins. While the concept of the common school has long been supported in the USA, in France and elsewhere, in its attempts to develop an intercultural approach and in the development of an ambitious, human-rights and equality-based CSPE curriculum with an emphasis on the active exercise of citizenship, the Republic of Ireland has proved more progressive than many of its closer neighbours over the past decade. This work aimed at uncovering mechanisms of cultural politics in the Republic of Ireland and at highlighting opposing forces and tensions between permanence and change in the field of Irish education policy. It was also an opportunity to examine and revisit some elements of the international debate on the links between religion and schooling within this context. Conversely, analysing the way concepts of ‘community’, ‘interculturalism’ or ‘ethos’ are defined in Ireland, the challenges of school segregation and of common schools, the issue of cultural imperialism and that of children’s rights in Irish schools may also hopefully contribute to international debates on these topics. Many characteristics of the Irish system and many related issues are wrongly perceived in Ireland as entirely specific to the Irish situation and to the country’s history. Cursory comparisons made in the Irish news media in the 2000s usually mentioned English integration policies, associated with multiculturalism, or French policies, most often reduced to assimilationism, with a focus on a potential Irish middle way that might distinguish itself from both and avoid consequences that were presented as essentially negative in both countries.

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Apart from these sweeping generalisations, and apart from a recognition in educational circles of the intercultural approach as a mark of international influence, in-depth international comparisons dealing with education policy have remained rare in the Irish context. The concept of interculturalism, which has played an important role in recent Irish political and educational discourse, was largely developed in Canada, and especially in Quebec, as well as through the Council of Europe (with other international influences of course, such as that of Carmel Camilleri from Tunisia in the 1980s). However, this does not seem to have led educational actors, or even most researchers in Ireland, to explore further what developments in some of those countries might be of interest for Ireland.7 Admittedly, historical and contemporary realities in the societies and education systems closest to it, either in England or in France, do not lend themselves readily to such a comparison. On the contrary, in the field of education policy, the recent history of Quebec lends itself to many parallels with the contemporary Irish situation. Among other things, a look at the Quebec experience would help put the position of the Irish State in perspective. An in-depth comparative study would fall out of the scope of the present work, but I will mention some aspects of this Quebec experience and some of the possible parallels, by way of an open conclusion to this contribution to an informed debate on the place of religion in school that is obviously far from over in the Republic of Ireland. Until 1998, the Quebec education system, just like the Irish one, was controlled by the main Christian Churches but financed by the State.8 Serving a majority Catholic population, it was characterised by religious duality, under the control of two denominational committees, one Catholic, the other Protestant (a religious duality coming on top of a linguistic one in the case of Quebec, with two school networks, an French-speaking one and an English-speaking one). These two committees remained even after the creation of a Department of Education and a High Council for Education in 1964, and the public school network remained bi-denominational. To all intents and purposes, the situation remained the same in the area of education until the 1960s, which constituted, in Quebec as in the Irish Republic, ‘a transitional period and a time of deep political, social and cultural ferment’.9 From that point on, Christian institutions started facing what has been described as a ‘credibility crisis’, the Catholic Church gradually losing its function of normative cultural framing.10 Principles of religious pluralism and secularity gradually established themselves in Quebec society, creating the conditions for a debate on a constitutional amendment that would put an end to the privileged position of the Christian Churches in education, and from there for a reform of the school system itself.11 As in the Republic of Ireland more recently, it was the immigration phenomenon, as it furthered the cultural and religious diversification of the population, that served as a catalyst for a calling into question of the system. This first led to the definition of new orientations on intercultural education, officially adopted in 1986.12 Up to the 1990s, the Catholic Schools’ Commission strove to preserve the denominational character

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and the Christian educational project of its schools, while being under legal obligation not to refuse access to non-Catholics.13 Drawing up the Quebec government project of reform of the education system was a long and tortuous process in the 1990s. The General Convention on Education put in place in 1995 concluded: We must put an end to the denominational nature of the education system or, in other words, achieve the separation between Church and State. There is no valid reason any more, other than a historical hang-up, to constrain a public education system on the basis of denominational privileges.14

After many years of studies, reports and public dialogue (including heated, sometimes acrimonious debates), the Quebec government finally obtained the necessary constitutional amendment in 1997.15 In 1998, a new piece of legislation amended the existing Education Act and replaced the two denominational committees with two language-based ones (English and French); in 2000, the 118 Act (Loi 118) effectively put an end to the denominational status of Quebec schools. Parallel studies were undertaken on the place of religion in public schools, and public education in Quebec retained a religious dimension at first, to the extent that parents could choose between a (Catholic or Protestant) moral and religious course and an ethics course for their children. However, one of the amendments to the Education Act in 1998 clearly affirmed the primacy of fundamental rights, specifying that ‘the educational project of the school must respect the freedom of conscience and of religion of the students, the parents and the school staff ’.16 In the same way, all arrangements relating to religion in school must now comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a bill of rights that was entrenched in the Constitution of Canada in 1982 and that makes all religious discrimination unconstitutional. Until 2005, in order to maintain this option for a denominational course in schools, successive Quebec governments invoked an opt-out clause that technically allowed them to suspend the right to equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (it was an exceptional measure that had to be voted by the National Assembly every five years). In 2005, the government finally decided not to have recourse to this special clause any more and a syllabus of ‘ethics and religious culture’ common to all Quebec schools replaced the former courses on religious and moral education from 2008 onwards. While the Catholic hierarchy in Quebec expressed reservations towards this new course, since it considered that its focus on the Christian tradition was insufficient, it broadly accepted the new situation, declaring that from now on the Church would fulfil its responsibility for religious education outside the public school network.17 A systematic comparison between the Quebec and the Irish situations would undoubtedly bring to light the distinctive character of each, but this brief overview of developments in Quebec was meant to show that, beyond

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these differences, there are striking similarities with aspects of Irish history and with the main contemporary issues now facing the Irish State and society. Notes 1 ‘Education Department Ignored NCCA Warning over Religion Teaching’, RTÉ News, 30 March 2012. Available at www.rte.ie/news/2012/0330/315527-dept-ignored -warning-over-religion-teaching/ (accessed 5 June 2015). 2 Fintan O’Toole, ‘How Hopes Raised by the Constitutional Convention Were Dashed’, Irish Times, 2 March 2015. 3 Sugrue and Gleeson, ‘Signposts and Silences’, p. 306. 4 Sugrue and Gleeson, ‘Signposts and Silences’, p. 306. 5 For a comparative analysis and questioning of the stereotypes related to these two ‘models’ in the areas of ‘laïcité’ and ‘multi-denominationalism’ in particular, read Jeffrey Hopes, ‘Le Laïc et le multiconfessionnel: les modèles français et britannique sont-ils compatibles?’, in Thomas Ferenczi (ed.), Religion et politique: une liaison dangereuse? (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2003), pp. 167–72. 6 For example Didier Lassalle, L’Intégration au Royaume-Uni: réussite et limites du multiculturalisme (Paris: Ophrys, 2009). On a related issue, see Florence Binard, ‘L’Égalité des sexes sacrifiée sur l’autel du multiculturalisme et du pluralisme religieux: des écoles islamiques subventionnées par l’État britannique’, in Michel Prum (ed.), De toutes les couleurs: de l’ethnicité dans l’aire anglophone (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), pp. 149–70. 7 Linguistic barriers might partly explain this. 8 See Stéphanie Tremblay, École et religions:  genèse du nouveau pari québécois (Québec: Éditions Fides, 2010). 9 Massimo Rubboli, ‘Laïcité, pluralisme religieux et éducation au Québec à la fin du XXe siècle’, in Jean-Michel Lacroix and Paul-André Linteau (eds), Vers la construction d’une citoyenneté canadienne (Paris:  Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2006), pp. 202. 10 Rubboli, ‘Laïcité, pluralisme religieux et éducation au Québec’, p. 202. 11 Tremblay, École et religions, pp. 31–49; Rubboli, ‘Laïcité, pluralisme religieux et éducation au Québec’, pp. 203 and 215. 12 Robert Gagnon, ‘Entre la foi et l’ouverture aux autres:  la Commission des Écoles Catholiques de Montréal, la promotion des valeurs chrétiennes et l’intégration des communautés culturelles (1973–1998)’, in Jean-Michel Lacroix and Paul-André Linteau (eds), Vers la construction d’une citoyenneté canadienne (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2006), pp. 77–85. 13 Gagnon, ‘Entre la foi et l’ouverture aux autres’, pp. 77–85. 14 ‘Il faut poursuivre la déconfessionnalisation du système d’éducation, ou, en d’autres termes, achever la séparation de l’Église et de l’État. Il n’y a plus de raison, autre qu’un empêchement de nature historique, pour contraindre un système d’éducation public à cause de privilèges confessionnels’. Rapport final de la Commission des États généraux sur l’éducation, p. 53; quoted in Ruboli, ‘Laïcité, pluralisme religieux et éducation au Québec’, p. 213 (my translation). 15 In 2001, a court challenge on the basis that the province and the federal government could not undermine minority rights through a constitutional amendment was rejected by the Quebec Court of Appeal in Potter v. Quebec (Attorney General).

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Janet Epp Buckingham, Fighting over God: A Legal and Political History of Religious Freedom in Canada (Kingston, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec:  McGill’s–Queen’s University Press, 2014), pp. 19–20. 16 Quebec Education Act 1998, Section 37. 17 In a letter addressed to the Quebec Department of Education by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Quebec on 15 September 2009. Press release of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Quebec, ‘Cours d’éthique et de culture religieuse: des correctifs s’imposent’, 23 September 2009, available at www.eveques.qc.ca/communiques/2009/20090923.html (accessed 22 January 2010). Rubboli, ‘Laïcité, pluralisme religieux et éducation au Québec’, p. 225.

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Irish and English media Daily Mail Irish Catholic Irish Examiner Irish Independent Irish Monthly Irish School Weekly Irish Times Metro Éireann Observer Sunday Tribune The Kerryman RTÉ Radio and Television networks

Websites (for primary sources) Churches Department of Education (www.education.ie) Educate Together Education and Training Boards European Commission Irish Parliament (Dáil, Seanad) Irish political parties NCCA (www.ncca.ie, including all school curricula) Primary and secondary schools Teacher-training centres Teaching organisations (INTO, ASTI, TUI, IATSE)

Other primary source documents consulted (legislation, government publications, speeches, reports, textbooks, etc.) Adult Education Commission, Lifelong Learning: Report, 1984.

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Note: ‘n.’after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page. admission/enrolment policies 19, 40, 69–70, 74, 114, 121, 125–6, 130–2, 136–7, 147–50, 156, 161–8, 189, 192–3, 198 Ahern, Bertie 42–4, 46, 48, 66, 130, 151, 169 An Foras 18, 97, 115 assimilationism 36, 44, 171–2, 184, 210 atheists/atheism 102–3, 194 see also no religion autonomy of thought (learning) 16, 86, 91–3, 97, 104, 172, 194–5, 200–1 see also critical thinking; emancipation; philosophy in school Bacik, Ivana 44 Baha’i 101 baptism 132, 163, 165–6, 186, 190 see also sacraments Begg, David (ICTU) 167 Buddhists 41, 48 Board for National Education/ Board for Intermediary Education 12, 13, 14 Brady, Seán (Cardinal) 43, 96, 131 Brennan, Séamus 57 Canada/Quebec 209–12 Carey, Pat 115, 137 Carr, John (INTO) 125

Cassin, James (Monsignor) 119, 132, 191 catechism/catechetics 80, 93–4, 97–8, 100 see also religious education; religious instruction Catholic Church 1, 9, 14–20, 23, 34, 41, 48–9, 59, 89–103 passim, 115–36 passim, 147–95 passim, 207, 209, 211 see also Catholic hierarchy; Catholic schools; patrons/patronage Catholic hierarchy 5–6, 13, 49, 65, 94, 96, 103–4, 114, 119–20, 123, 128–34, 151–3, 160, 165, 182, 187, 191–4, 208, 212 see also Catholic Church Catholic schools 5, 14, 16, 24, 48, 57, 65, 93–104 passim, 113–33 passim, 152–4, 161–9 passim, 181–97 passim, 211–12 see also denominational system/schools; National Schools Catholicism (à la carte) 37 child-centred education 16, 59, 61, 97, 155, 197, 200–1, 207 children as citizens 27, 60, 62–4, 66, 68, 91, 105, 122, 159, 201, 208 see also rights (children’s) children’s rights see rights (children’s) Children’s Rights Alliance (Irish) 89, 95, 114, 156, 158, 195

232

232 children’s/young people’s viewpoints/ voices 39, 81, 105, 129, 158–9, 171, 184, 200 see also autonomy of thought (learning) Christian Brothers 13, 15, 105, 119–21, 181 see also religious orders; St Mary’s College Church of Ireland College 13, 14, 100, 117, 150 see also teacher-training centres Church of Ireland 13–14, 18, 38, 89, 96, 99–101, 115, 118, 126, 151, 161, 163, 192–3 see also patrons/patronage; Protestant schools citizenship education/Civic Social and Political Education 80, 90–3, 103–6, 196, 201, 207, 210 civic instruction 26, 27, 90–1 Cloyne Report 48–9, 114 cohesion (social/national) 11–12, 62, 169–71, 207 common good 21, 47–8, 59 common school (local) 12, 17, 115, 117, 124–5, 132, 135, 138, 162–3, 167–8, 171–2, 183, 193–4, 198, 208–10 see also community schools; comprehensive schools communion 96, 126, 165, 187 see also sacraments communitarian/ism 3, 9, 32, 36, 42, 44, 162, 194, 209–10 community 8, 32, 38–47 passim, 60, 63, 92–3, 103–4, 120, 125, 127, 153, 155, 161–5, 170, 183, 194, 210 see also identity (social); identity (religious); school community Community National Schools 99, 115–17, 127, 130, 135, 137–8, 147–8, 163, 168, 188–9, 207 community schools 17, 18, 106, 118, 133, 167, 190 comprehensive schools 17, 18, 118 Constitution 19–22, 34, 37, 39, 43, 64, 94, 149, 156, 159, 208, 211–12 consumerism see market control 1, 5, 12–17, 113–16, 120–37 passim, 151–2, 171, 190, 209, 211

Index

see also denominational system; patrons/patronage Corcoran, Timothy 24, 27 Cottrell, Sean (IPPN) 96 Council of Europe 70–1, 92, 95, 211 critical thinking 58, 61, 64, 74, 81, 87, 90–2, 97–8, 101, 158, 201 CSPE see citizenship education Cullen, Paul (Archbishop) 13 curricula/syllabuses 2, 9, 15, 23–5, 27, 40, 49, 59–60, 64, 67, 69, 74, 80–106, 113, 171, 193, 207–9 Dáil/Seanad debates 15, 24, 26, 44, 115, 136 Davitt, Michael 14, 15 democracy/democratic/democratisation 2, 6–7, 15, 17, 19, 33, 40, 43, 48–9, 59, 64, 73, 81, 87, 92–3, 97, 106, 120, 123–5, 147, 152, 160–1, 163, 170–2, 180–8, 194–8, 200–1, 207–10 Dempsey, Noel 62, 127 denominational system/schools 1, 6–7, 11, 17, 22, 25–6, 70, 74, 82, 88–9, 93–103 passim, 113–18, 125–33, 136, 138, 148–62 passim, 167–8, 180–8 passim, 207–8, 211 see also Catholic schools; patrons/ patronage; Protestant schools De Rossa, Proinsias 44 difference see diversity discrimination 3–4, 7–9, 19, 22, 25, 38–49 passim, 65–70, 74–5, 86–7, 95, 98, 100, 114, 117, 124, 131, 139, 147–99 passim, 207, 210, 212 diversity/diversification (socio-cultural) 1, 12, 32, 36, 39, 41–5, 48–9, 56, 60, 65–6, 81–2, 86–92, 105, 113, 137, 171, 185, 194, 210–11 diversity/diversification of school types 113, 116, 123, 129, 137–8, 147, 151, 163, 167–8, 192, 197–9, 208 diversity in schools 4, 7–8, 67–74, 86–8, 94, 98–9, 103, 121–2, 125, 132–3, 160, 163, 167–71, 179–80, 184–6, 189–92, 196, 199–201

233

Inde x

Doyle, James (Bishop) 13 Drumm, Michael (Father, Chair of Catholic Schools’ Partnership) 94, 133 Dunboyne controversy 96–7, 153 Educate Together/ET schools 17–18, 37, 98–101, 115–17, 126–38 passim, 147, 154, 156, 163, 166, 168–9, 180, 183, 188, 195–200 Education about Religions and Beliefs and Ethics 85 see also ethics/ethical education Education and Training Boards 100, 116, 127, 172, 189 see also Vocational Education Committees/VEC schools egalitarian 32, 80, 92, 105, 124, 188 emancipation 8, 37, 59, 86, 194, 196, 200–1 environmental cost 162 equality (of treatment/status/citizenship equality) 3–4, 7–9, 32, 42–3, 45–8, 59, 66–9, 72–4, 86–100 passim, 113, 118, 125, 129, 147–51, 160–200 passim, 207–9, 212 see also discrimination; inequalities equality legislation 148–51, 189 equality of opportunity/equity 62, 67, 122, 124 Equality Authority 19, 45, 66, 69, 95, 148–50, 187, 197 Equate 166 ethics/ethical education 47, 64, 84–5, 95, 98–101, 104–5, 193–6, 199, 202, 212 ethos 23, 25, 47, 57, 72–4, 84–5, 88–9, 91, 104–36 passim, 149–64 passim, 179–84, 187–200, 207, 210 European citizenship 60, 74, 84, 91, 103 European countries (comparison with) 5, 12, 17, 19–20, 24, 32, 103, 137, 190, 201–2, 209–10 see also Council of Europe European Court of Human Rights 157–8 European Union (also EEC) 2, 33–4, 40–1, 43, 49, 56–8, 60, 69–71, 74, 76n.11, 83, 91–2, 95, 103,

233 121, 125, 137, 150–1, 156, 158, 160 exclusion/exclusive 2, 3, 7, 33, 36, 44, 47, 66, 132, 147, 162, 164–5, 167, 186, 197, 208 Fianna Fáil 20, 34, 35, 43, 115, 134–8, 148 financing/funding 1, 13–22 passim, 68, 72, 113–26 passim, 137–8, 151, 153–6, 162–3, 170, 180, 195, 199, 207, 209 Fine Gael 34–5, 44, 124, 136, 138, 148, 207 FitzGerald, Garret 34–5, 47, 70, 124, 129, 143n75, 166, 193, 195 Fitzpatrick, Billy (TUI) 126, 188, 193 France 202, 209–11 freedom of thought, conscience and religion/conscience clause 19–22, 26, 39, 44, 85, 97, 100, 104, 151–2, 156–60, 180–201 passim, 208–10, 212 see also rights (human) Gaelscoileanna/all-Irish schools 18, 116, 197 gender equality 67–8, 87, 91, 173n6, 188, 197, 213n.6 Gilmore, Eamon 135 global citizenship 74, 83, 90–2, 103 God (Christian) 16–27 passim, 39, 43, 57, 59, 83, 85, 91–104 passim, 120 Great Britain/England 2, 12, 41, 46, 58, 67, 100, 162, 168, 170, 172, 198, 209–11 Hanafin, Mary 67, 117, 124, 136, 151, 166, 189 Haughey, Charles 34, 35 Hayes, Brian 136 Higgins, Michael D. 26, 44, 202 Hillery, Patrick 17 Hindus 41, 48 history in school 4, 23–5, 27, 34, 61, 80, 82, 90–2, 98, 103, 105, 194

234

234 homogenous/homogeneity 2, 11, 12, 37, 45, 87, 92, 208 humanism 102–3 Humanist Association of Ireland 38–9, 42, 101, 155, 166 Human Rights Commission (Irish) 129 identity (Irish/national) 32–6, 42, 57, 80–3, 87–8, 92, 105–6, 162, 172, 194, 209 Christian 27, 32, 36, 39, 42–4, 49, 64–5, 82–3, 90–1, 208 Gaelic/Catholic 2–5, 9, 15, 20, 22–5, 33, 36, 38–9, 56, 83, 90–1, 208 post-Christian 32, 40 republican/civic 32, 42, 44, 46–8, 59, 155, 162–3, 183–4, 194, 208–9 identity (personal/individual) 3, 38, 48, 63, 85–6, 95, 161, 172, 194, 200–1 identity (social) 3, 38 identity (religious) 2, 27, 32–3, 38–9, 48, 75, 84, 87, 103, 105, 172 immigrants/immigration 1–2, 32, 35–6, 41–6, 56, 67–70, 72, 88, 95, 134, 137, 154, 163, 166–9, 211 inclusion/inclusiveness 2–5, 9, 32, 43–5, 61–2, 67–70, 73–4, 86–105 passim, 113, 130–3, 137, 147–8, 150, 163–200 passim, 208 see also equality (of treatment/status/ citizenship equality) indoctrination 97–8, 159, 201 inequalities 18, 46, 61, 65, 86–7, 91–3, 154, 169, 171, 185–99 passim, 208–9 see also discrimination integrated schools 169–71 integrated teaching/curriculum 25–6, 81, 88, 90, 93, 96–8, 180 intercultural education 9, 56, 62, 67, 69–75, 80–1, 86–90, 92, 113, 121, 125, 165, 170–1, 185, 195, 201, 207–8, 210–11 interculturalism 2, 44–6, 82, 210–11 see also intercultural education interdenominational schools 16, 18, 96, 115, 117–18, 151, 189

Index

Irish Congress of Trade Unions 167 Irish National Teachers’ Organisation/ unions (INTO, ASTI, TUI, IATSE) see teacher organisations Italy 157–8 Jews/Jewish schools 48, 73, 101, 163, 188, 192–3, 197 jus soli 35 Kelleher, Declan (INTO) 125 Kennedy, Stanislaus (Sister) 134 Kenny, Enda 44, 49, 115 Kilfeather, Fionnuala 127, 184 Labour Party (Irish) 26, 33, 35, 44, 123–4, 135–6, 138, 148, 207 Lenihan, Brian 70 Lenihan, Conor 137 Leydon, Moira (ASTI) 126 majority/majority rule 2, 3, 13, 19–20, 34, 36–7, 48, 74, 82–3, 87–8, 90, 104, 115, 128, 133, 154, 159–60, 162, 171, 185, 193, 199–200, 207, 211 manager/management see patrons; school boards Marino Institute see St Mary’s College of Education market (also: of education)/mercantile 56–8, 61, 65, 124, 134, 162, 169, 172, 182–3, 193, 201 Martin, Diarmuid (Archbishop) 120, 131–2, 134, 161, 166, 169, 192–3 Martin, Micheál 82, 116 Mary Immaculate College, Limerick 5, 14, 75, 117, 121–2 see also teacher-training centres Mater Dei Institute 5–6, 103, 117, 181, 189 materialism 83, 102–3 McAleese, Mary 33, 42, 44 McCutcheon, Fintan 132, 169 McDowell, Michael 45 McGorman, Enda 68, 70 McQuaid, John Charles (Archbishop) 20

235

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Methodist Church/school 89, 99, 115, 151, 187 see also Protestant schools minorities religious 2–3, 20, 23, 38, 41–2, 45, 95, 100, 113, 133, 147, 153–4, 157, 162, 184, 187–8, 191, 200 cultural/‘ethnic’ 2, 4, 41, 69–71, 74, 82, 88, 171, 184, 210 monotheism 33, 102–3 see also God (Christian) moral codes/morality religious 37, 40, 47–8, 60–1, 64–5, 84, 193–4 civic 40, 47, 64–5, 102, 104, 122, 125, 163, 180–2, 187–8, 191, 193–5 see also values/and discourse on moral education 16, 21–4, 27, 83, 85, 92, 94, 105, 152, 212 see also ethics/ethical education Moriarty, Michael (IVEA) 135 Mulcahy, Richard 15, 24 multicultural/ism 45–7, 67, 69, 71, 82, 92, 126, 162, 194–5, 207, 210 multi-denominational 99, 114–15, 126, 132–3, 151, 188, 191, 195–6, 199 Murphy, John A. 26 Murphy Report 48–9, 114, 209 music in school 87, 94, 138 Muslim schools 94, 115, 138, 188, 193, 197 Muslims 41, 48, 73, 99, 101, 189 see also Muslim schools National Council for Curriculum and Assessment 75, 81, 85–6, 89, 92, 99, 101, 207 National Parents’ Council 81, 127, 135, 184 National Schools (note: primary schools also mentioned throughout) 1, 13–14, 22–3, 75, 90, 93, 98, 120, 130, 134–5, 161, 165, 192, 197 nationalism cultural/‘ethnic’ 2–3, 11, 23, 33, 36, 47, 59, 63, 83, 98, 185, 208 civic 2, 47

235 neutrality (state) 20–1, 39, 43, 44, 48–9, 85, 104, 117, 158–9, 179, 182, 186, 195, 209, 211 no religion 3, 37–43, 48, 88, 102–4, 121, 124, 153, 155, 187, 194, 200 non-denominational 13, 18, 114, 118, 126–9, 131, 150–1, 188, 191, 193, 199 see also secular Northern Ireland 2, 4, 20, 34, 35, 47, 90, 100, 102, 151, 162, 169–72 O’Connor, Dan (CPSMA) 126, 167, 190 O’Keeffe, Batt 133, 135, 184, 191 Ó Loingsigh, Dónal (INTO) 125, 188 O’Reilly, Leo (Bishop) 133 O’Sullivan, Jan 17, 202 open society 8, 46, 57 see also inclusion/inclusiveness Orthodox Church 41 owners of schools see patrons/patronage parental choice 37, 48–9, 96, 115–17, 124–31 passim, 137–9, 147–54 passim, 167–9, 172, 183, 188, 199, 212 see also market (also: of education)/mercantile parents’ rights see rights (parents’) parish 40, 96, 114, 153, 161–2, 165, 186 patrons/patronage 1, 9, 14, 17–19, 63, 65, 70, 81, 85, 95–7, 104, 113–39 passim, 147–58 passim, 165–7, 179–92 passim, 196, 208 see also trusts/deeds of trust Pearse, Padraig 14–15 Pentecostal Church 41 philosophy in school 64, 98, 200–2, 210 physical education 87 pluralism 2, 6, 19, 27, 34–5, 40, 42, 48–9, 63–4, 80–93 passim, 102, 105–6, 113, 118, 123, 131, 137–8, 154, 158, 171–2, 184, 209–11 polytheism 85, 91, 102 Presbyterian Church/schools 12, 14, 41, 89, 115, 151, 188 see also Protestant schools

236

236 priests 20, 23, 49, 95, 114, 120, 126, 134, 165, 190 private 18–22, 48–9, 105–6, 113–39 passim, 148–54 passim, 166, 196–7, 209 see also patrons/patronage private sphere/matter 37, 39, 48, 157 Protestant schools 11, 94, 115, 118, 130, 152–4, 163, 188, 192, 197 see also denominational system/schools public 17–18, 21–2, 32, 40, 43, 47–9, 59, 85, 94, 97–8, 106, 113, 116, 122–36 passim, 151, 157–8, 166–72 passim, 180, 192–3, 208–9, 211–12 see also private public opinion 1, 51n.24n.35, 124, 127–9, 153, 186 Quinn, Ruairi 49, 123–4, 132, 138, 166, 187 Rabbitte, Pat 123–4, 136 racism/anti-racism 45–6, 56, 62, 69–74, 86, 88, 92, 95, 114, 167, 169 refugees/asylum seekers 42, 45, 66–7, 70–2, 154, 184 see also immigrants/immigration relativism (cultural/moral) 87, 194–5 religious education 5, 16, 21–2, 73, 80–106 passim, 117, 125, 152, 180, 187, 189–90, 207, 212 see also religious instruction religious instruction 12, 17, 19, 23–7, 89–104 passim, 124–30 passim, 138, 158, 184, 186, 190, 199 see also religious education religious orders/congregations/CORI 5–6, 15–16, 49, 58–9, 81, 105, 114, 118–20, 122, 130, 167, 181, 184, 190 republican/ism 9, 32, 46, 47, 48, 49, 92, 98, 163, 184, 195, 207–10 rights (cultural) 17, 25, 93, 114, 128, 153–4, 170, 172, 194, 210 rights (human) 7, 9, 22, 33, 38, 40, 48, 63–4, 70–5, 87, 92, 98, 114, 124–5, 129, 151–2, 154, 156–8,

Index

170, 179–80, 186, 191, 194–6, 198, 210 children’s 5, 7–8, 16, 19, 22, 25–6, 49, 63, 66, 70, 73, 85, 88, 95–8, 106, 114, 147–8, 151, 155–61, 166, 180, 185–201 passim, 208–10 see also United Nations /UN Committees/documents rights (parents’) 8, 16, 19, 21, 120, 152–3, 156–60 see also parental choice Ryan Report 48–9, 114–15, 209 sacraments 94, 96–7, 126, 186 see also baptism; communion school boards 18–19, 118–20, 132, 136, 149, 163, 180–1, 183, 187–8 school buildings 94, 96, 116, 132, 154, 185 school community 88, 96, 101, 119, 165, 171, 181, 183–4, 191 school heads/principals (and representative associations) 41, 47, 58, 68, 70, 78, 89, 96–7, 99, 105–6, 119–26 passim, 163, 169, 181, 188–99 passim secular 12, 15–20, 23–6, 37, 43, 46, 97, 106, 117, 122, 124, 126, 132, 150, 163, 193 secularisation 2, 32, 34, 36–7, 39, 126 secularism 43, 103 secularity 209, 211 see also neutrality (state) segregation school/religious 1, 3, 11–14, 93, 97, 99–100, 124, 126–7, 132, 135, 137–8, 147–8, 153, 161, 163, 165–9, 179, 182, 194, 207–10 social 93, 167–72, 197 gender 12, 93 separation between Church and State see neutrality (state) sexual orientation 180, 187, 200 Sinn Féin 124 Smith, Michael (Bishop) 130–1, 165 social class/inequality 15, 87, 91–2, 104, 147, 154, 193 Social, Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) 35

237

237

Inde x

Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) 80, 82, 91–2 Socialist Party (Irish) 124 South Africa 172 special needs 12, 67, 150, 167–8, 170 spiritual/spirituality/religious spirit 24, 26, 40, 61, 64–5, 83–5, 119, 122, 152, 180–1, 187, 199 see also ethos St Mary’s College of Education (Marino Institute) 14, 99, 120–1, 181, 188 see also teacher-training centres St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra 5, 14, 100, 117, 121–2, 142n69 see also teacher-training centres symbols (religious) 26, 96, 157–8, 185 teacher organisations/unions (INTO, ASTI, TUI, IATSE) 9, 14, 68–9, 81, 89–103 passim, 113, 120, 124–35 passim, 148, 150–1, 161–8 passim, 183, 187–8, 193 teacher recruitment 19, 40, 67, 100, 118, 121, 133, 150–1, 188, 192 teacher-training centres 6, 13–14, 97, 100, 103, 117–18, 120–3, 189, 199 textbooks 14, 23, 34, 90–1, 93–4, 102–4, 190 transfer (divestment) of patronage 131–3, 137–8, 147, 168, 181

Travellers 4, 12, 45, 56, 62, 67, 70–3, 86, 150, 167–8, 170–1 trusts/deeds of trust 119–21, 133, 140n19, 150, 181, 191 United Nations/UN Committees/ documents 6, 29, 69, 95, 136, 139n3, 151, 153, 160, 167, 210 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) 66, 70, 73, 114, 125, 155–8, 196, 200–1, 210 United States 159–60, 172, 195, 200, 209–10 universities 6–7, 24, 75, 117, 121–2 values/and discourse on 33, 37, 40, 43, 47, 58, 60–1, 63–5, 72–4, 82–96 passim, 102, 104, 119, 122, 134, 149–63 passim, 180–5, 188–96 Veritas 5–6, 93–4, 103–4, 164, 190 Vocational Education Committees/VEC schools 18, 72, 99, 116, 118, 126–37 passim, 166–7 see also Education and Training Boards Webb, Alfred 14 Workers’ Party (Irish) 124 xenophobia 36, 69, 71 see also racism/anti-racism

238