Mayo election candidate calls for end to church control of schools
The general election candidate for People Before Profit in Mayo Joe Daly, who is a secondary school teacher in a voluntary catholic school, has called on left candidates in Mayo to make separation of Church and State a key issue in the upcoming general election.
Mr. Daly stated “The recent Scoping Inquiry report into sexual abuse in schools run by religious orders shows clearly the urgent need to end the church control of our educational system.
"Here we have a report showing how over 42 religious orders harboured at least 844 alleged abusers amounting to a minimum of 2400 allegations of sexual abuse.
"Given that most victims never come forward this is likely to be a gross underestimate of the real scale of the abuse
“Yet the main government parties not only indemnified the religious orders that covered up the abuse but continue to allow these organisations to control the education of children in over 88% of primary schools and 48% of secondary schools.
"We have the farcical and undemocratic situation where the majority of schools are providing religious based instruction in publicly funded schools with publicly paid teachers in a way that is completely at odds with the majority views of the public in terms of issues like divorce, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and LGBTQ+ issues, marriage equality and trans rights.
“While the 1998 Education Act provides for the right of students to opt out of religious instruction on an individual basis, this is a token gesture to allow the church to maintain control while the whole ethos of schools under religious patronage discriminates and promotes one religion.
“The evidence is quite clear that the general public want secular schools.
"According to a large representative survey of over 1011 adults carried out by the opinion market research agency in May 2023 for the Education and Training Board lreland (ETBI), the umbrella body for the State-run, community national schools (CNS), only 9% of adults or less that one in ten adults would prefer a religious body to provide education while 61% would prefer a multi-denominational system”
“The process to transfer patronage of schools has been a complete failure.
"The establishment parties lack the political will to upset the Church hierarchy so it will require a genuine left government to bring all schools into public ownership and control in a secular system that treats religion as a private matter.
"The question is do parties like Sinn Féin have the political courage to join People Before Profit in making this a serious issue in the upcoming general election?”