Minister meets Protestants over funding

Representatives of the Protestant voluntary secondary schools met the Minister for Education, Batt O'Keeffe, this afternoon to highlight their concerns about cuts to funding.

After the meeting they said they had a cordial meeting and the Minister had listened to their concerns particularly about pupil/teacher ratios.

Earlier, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin said he hopes some way can be found to guarantee pluralism in education in Ireland.

He was responding to remarks made yesterday by Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Dr John Neill, who said Protestant schools would be forced out of business as a result of last year's Budget decision to cut their funding.

On RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr Martin said he believed there was a public interest in guaranteeing the rights of the Protestant community in education.

He said Protestant schools are not just 'schools of a minority'.

Dr Martin said they have represented a major contribution to pluralism in education in Ireland when minorities of various kinds, religious and others, were able to 'find a home in Protestant schools'.

He said that without Protestant communities and without their schools, he believes pluralism today in Ireland would be 'poorer'.

Archbishop Martin said he hopes 'some way can be found to guarantee that tradition can continue'.

Regarding comments by Minister O'Keeffe that the State may face a legal challenge over the payments because they are not made to Catholic schools, Dr Martin says he is surprised that 'the Constitutional difficulty emerges so many years after the publication of the Constitution and the practice'.

He said that we have to ensure that economic difficulties do not allow long-term interests and public interests to be damaged.

He said he is not aware of any legal action by the Catholic Church or Catholic schools over the grants.