Labour Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn has repeated his call for
religious congregations to transfer their schools to the State.
The
Minister has insisted that if this does not happen his department will
be forced to impose further cuts on the educational sector.
This is
despite the fact that the State will be unable to actualise any value
whatsoever even if the religious congregations were to transfer all the
schools infrastructure to the State and therefore the transfer will have
no impact on any cuts.
Meanwhile, Government foot-dragging has diminished by some €100m any
substantial benefit that would be available to former residents who
suffered abuse.
Mr Quinn is insisting that if the religious congregations do not
comply with him demand for an extra €200m worth of reimbursement to the
State for the cost of redress to former residents of Church-run
institutions dealt with by the Ryan Report, then they should hand over
the schools instead.
But, it’s not as if Mr Quinn can sell the schools
to avoid making cuts, the same children who attend the schools still
need an education whether or not the schools are led by religious
congregations of State-controlled.
It begs the question as to whether Mr Quinn may have another
altogether different agenda in linking the issue of Ryan redress to
school patronage.
The Minister has already proposed that some 50pc of
schools should no longer have a Catholic ethos and be managed by a
Catholic Board of Management (a figure, bizarrely, he has been unable to
back up with facts or evidence).
Former residents who suffered abuse in State-supervised, Church-run
institutions, of course, deserve to be compensated accordingly and to
have their needs addressed appropriately.
Quite how Ruairi Quinn taking
control of Catholic schools does this is beyond me.
Mr Quinn, in his statement, also referred to his desire to set up a
statutory fund to aid victims of abuse. This is, of course, welcome.
However, more than two years after the Dáil called for such a fund and
religious congregations agreed to contribute hundreds of millions of
Euro to such a fund, Mr Quinn was unable to say when it would be
established and, crucially, when those who suffered so dreadfully would
be able to avail of the funds.
As I understand it, some €100m has already been shaved from the €476m
that the 18 religious congregations dealt with in the Ryan Report, have
offered for further redress largely due to the ongoing devaluation of
property.
The inaction of the previous Fianna Fáil-Green Party
government and the current Fine Gael-Labour coalition in establishing
the above-mentioned statutory fund some two years later has led to a
situation where there is actually less-and-less funding to provide for
the needs of victims.
This vital issue is too important to become a political football and
the needs of victims for redress is too crucial to be used by
politicians for other unrelated motives regardless of how important
individual politicians believe issues to be.
Redress and the futhre of
school patronage are very different issues.
They should not be
conflagrated to muddy the waters.