The Denominational School System

Religion and education have recently been called ‘a thorny issue for Ireland’, one which regularly attracts the media glare. It is true that the denominational school system has evoked heated debate in Ireland. At least for the time being, however, it has firm roots in the Constitution of Ireland. In the Constitution of Ireland, family, parents and education are very much intertwined. Article 42.1 recognises the family ‘as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights’. It names the family as the main educator of children, hence stressing the limited nature of the State's role in education, with a guarantee of the ‘inalienable right and duty’ of parents in this respect. According to McDonagh, the latter article ‘was an almost inevitable conclusion to the long struggle about education for Catholics in the nineteenth century and at the same time a genuine attempt to protect minority rights’. Moreover, the reference to ‘natural’ and ‘inalienable’ rights reveals the influence of Catholic teaching on Articles 41 and 42 along with the natural law philosophy imbuing both of these articles.

According to Article 42.4, the State is obliged to ‘provide for free primary education’. A particular importance lies in the preposition ‘for’, which for Casey carries the whole history of such education in Ireland. For historical reasons, there is a particular legacy in Ireland of resistance to the idea of state schools. Hence, the role of the State is to provide premises and sufficient finance to schools, while the schools themselves are managed and run by trustees. Moreover, a similar arrangement concerns teachers who are paid by the State but have a contract with school trustees. With respect to these trustees, Irish schools are generally denominational, so that the vast majority of schools are owned or managed by the Catholic parishes or religious orders. In addition, there are some Protestant schools and a few schools owned by other religious communities, such as Jews and Muslims, as well as a growing number of multi-denominational schools.

The denominational system of education was supported in 1998 by a court ruling that has been called a ‘landmark case’.