Irish Primary School System

The patronage of Irish primary schools has been a controversial issue from its inception and often becomes a topic of public discourse. This happened in January 2014 after the European Court of Human Rights held that the State had a vicarious liability as employer to a former primary school pupil for sexual abuse by her teacher when she was eight years old in 1973. The State, which was responsible for school regulations and the payment of teachers, had maintained in the Irish courts that it had no obligation for what happened as management of the school was the responsibility of the board of management and patron.

The development of the Irish primary school system was influenced more by the legacy of the reformation rather than rational planning. Following the recommendations of a number of reports, one in 1812 recommended the introduction of a multi-denominational system of primary education in Ireland. Daniel O’Connell’s election as a Member of Parliament (in Westminster) for Clare in 1828 was a watershed in modern Irish history, leading to Catholic Emancipation the following April, permitting Catholics to sit in parliament and hold various civic and military offices. Following pressure from Thomas Wyse of Waterford, one of the first Catholics elected to the Westminster Parliament after Catholic Emancipation, to establish educational opportunities for Irish Catholics at all three levels, a national system of primary education was established in 1831 by Edward Stanley, Chief Secretary for Ireland. He believed that all children, regardless of religious denomination, should be educated together.

The objectives and structure of the proposed system were outlined in a letter sent by Stanley to Augustus FitzGerald, Duke of Leinster, in October 1831, inviting him to become chairman of the new board. The board was to provide capital and current grants, as well as other supports like textbooks and essential requisites, for schools that provided non-denominational primary education, with separate religious instruction for different denominations. It preceded a similar system in Britain by forty years. It was a most ambitious plan, especially having regard to the fact that there were then no qualified teachers available. Applications to establish schools were to be made to the Board by reputable people of both Catholic and Protestant faiths. The original intention of Catholic-Protestant management never really came into effect because of animosities between the different religions, and the Board soon decided that it had no choice but to accept applications from one denomination only. As a result, the system evolved with denominational management, but schools were obliged to accept children of all faiths. The patron of a school became the person that made the application, usually the local bishop or some other ecclesiastic like a parish priest or rector. A bishop generally appointed the local parish priest as manager and the clerical managerial system for primary schools was established, with the State adopting a subsidiary role. The State paid the salaries of teachers and two-thirds of the cost of buildings, as well as making a contribution in respect of running costs, based on enrolment. The local community generally provided a site for a school, which was either offered free of charge by some benevolent family or organisation or purchased with local funds, and this together with a third of the running costs became known as ‘the local contribution’.

Initially the Catholic hierarchy welcomed the new national school system, but later a split developed with some bishops, especially the Archbishop of Dublin, Most Reverend Daniel Murray, publicly supporting its introduction, and a few, notably Mayo-born Archbishop John McHale of Tuam, vigorously opposing it. He regarded the new system as an insidious attempt to convert Irish Catholics to Protestantism, a viewpoint that finally prevailed at the Synod of Thurles in 1850, the first formal meeting of the Irish episcopacy since 1642. The system grew rapidly, and up to the Great Famine (1845-50) most schools catered for pupils of different religions. Despite the initial intention of only supporting non-denominational schools, the three main churches (Catholic, Church of Ireland and Presbyterian) became hostile to the national plan and had secured various concessions by the middle of the nineteenth century. After the appointment of Paul Cullen as Archbishop of Armagh in 1850 (and of Dublin in 1852), he sought to establish denominational control over all aspects of education for Irish Catholics. Thereafter, the Irish primary school system developed along denominational lines, with individual schools owned by different churches.

After independence of what was called the Irish Free State (now Ireland) on 6 December 1922, the denominational primary school system became more entrenched. While the system was denominational, it catered for pupils of different religions. No child could be required to attend denominational religious instruction, a principle enshrined in the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State and in the present 1937 Constitution. Patronage of Irish primary schools, with some few exceptions like Educate Together multi-denominational schools, has been denominational ever since. One of the big supporters of inter-denominational education was the great Irish patriot and international humanitarian Michael Davitt, who was involved in a public debate on the topic with two bishops at the time of his death in May 1906. It was just as controversial in 1906 as it is today.

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