Ireland to take schools from Church control

Jamie Smyth:

Dublin plans to remove hundreds of schools from the control of the Roman Catholic Church to reflect Ireland's increasingly diverse population, in the biggest shake-up of its education system in almost a century.

Ruairi Quinn, Ireland's minister for education, said on Tuesday that there was a need to transfer the patronage of hundreds of Roman Catholic schools to provide more choice for people of other faiths and reflect changes that had taken place in Irish society.

The proposals come amid a bitter debate about the role of the Church in Irish society, prompted by revelations of clerical child sex abuse and subsequent cover-ups by the Church authorities. But they also follow a sharp rise in the number of foreign-born residents - which now account for 17 per cent of the Irish population, up from 6 per cent in 1991 - as well as a growing secularisation of society.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 15, 2012 1:16 AM
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