‘Risk of race riots looms over pupil places deficit’

IRELAND faces the danger of race riots like those which engulfed France two years ago if efforts to integrate immigrant families in schools are not hastened, an education expert said yesterday.

Michael Moriarty, general secretary of the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA), said he supported Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin’s view that there must be a greater mix of patronage models for primary schools.

The IVEA represents city and county Vocational Education Committees which are likely to be given a role in operating primary schools for the first time in the next few years, the first of them in north Co Dublin on a pilot basis next year.

A shortage of school places in the capital left hundreds of children without a place in recent weeks.

However, large numbers of the children concerned and those enrolling in a new Catholic primary school in Diswellstown were from migrant families, prompting some suggestions of educational apartheid.

“There’s a fear that there might be ghettoisation, which must be avoided. There’s plenty of evidence of mistakes in other countries, like the race riots which arose in France two years ago from a lack of integration for a particular community,” Mr Moriarty said.

“If that happens here, and it appears to have happened accidentally already, it would be a grave error.

“We welcome the development of a community-based school model at primary level, but there’s an increased sense of urgency now to fast-track its development and the schools must reflect the communities they serve.”

More than 3,000 of the country’s 3,280 schools are under the patronage of the Catholic church, although most new schools in recent years have been of a multi-denominational ethos.

Archbishop Martin said yesterday the shortage of places in some areas was the fault of the Department of Education and other State agencies rather than the Catholic church, because of poor planning. However, he also cautioned against too much State control of the primary school system.

Irish National Teachers’ Organisation general secretary John Carr said principals and teachers had faced unfair accusations of racism in north Dublin.

“The utter failure by local planners and the Department of Education to provide enough places has put principals in the intolerable position of having to explain to parents why there are no places for their children in the local school.

“It is a situation which has not been created by our members but they are the ones who often have to defend it,” he said.

“Schools and their teachers up and down the country are taking in children of all religions and from all cultural backgrounds, regardless of the denomination of the school.”