School patronage - A system based on dishonesty

This week, the Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) will meet Taoiseach Enda Kenny to discuss the absence of choice in our schools and the painfully slow progress being made on what was to have been one of the defining projects for this Government — changes to school patronage.

That the meeting will take place in what has been decreed Catholic Schools Week, “an all-Ireland annual event which invites Catholic schools to give expression in a special way to the ethos of Catholic education”, sets this meeting in a deeply ironic context, a context that reflects the growing dishonesty and hypocrisy surrounding religious control of schools, especially admission to schools for those who might not support the controlling ethos of an institution.

This has, for decades, promoted behaviour that, in far too many instances, makes a mockery of personal or social integrity.