Funding private schools - A policy of envy won’t fix anything

Minister of State Alan Kelly’s budget kite-flying about funding private schools was as craven as it was irrational.

His assertion that “in principle, I think the day of being able to give €96m to €100m to private schools is... going to come to an end” may have been a bone thrown to assuage his party colleagues so unhappy — and rightly so — with the shenanigans of Health Minister James Reilly, but as a contribution to the debate about how we fix this country, it was worse than childish. It was class-war bluster straight out of the Arthur Scargill handbook of envy as policy.

The reality is this. Every child gets more or less the same funding from the State to complete their second-level education. In a society that aspires to be fair, how else can it be? A child cannot be denied opportunity because their family cannot pay for education. Equally, a child cannot be limited because their parents decide, after paying all of their taxes, to augment their child’s school’s funding by paying fees.