Educate Together 'facing funding crisis'

There are fears that Educate Together national office may have to significantly reduce their services to schools due to a lack of funding.

Multi-demoninational Educate Together is the country's fastest-growing school patron. Seventeen premises have opened in the last three years, with five more to follow by 2016.

However, the body is facing a serious financial crisis with more than €4m needed by 2019.

"More parents than ever want to send their children to an Educate Together school. But at the moment, we’re struggling to keep up with that growing demand," the overseeing body said in a statement.

CEO of Educate Together Paul Rowe said: "The critical issue here is that it costs around €95,000 per new school over four years to get a school up and running.

"We currently get €10,000 of that from the State and have to find the rest from our own resources. In the case of second level schools, we currently get absolutely nothing to open a new second-level school. This is unsustainable."

The Educate Together national office team opens and manages new schools, recruits volunteers to serve on boards of management, and runs teacher education courses.

The national office also liaises on behalf of schools with the Department of Education on issues such as school accommodation, staffing allocations and special educational needs.