I thank the Chairman and the members for the invitation to address the committee with the specific purpose of seeking resolutions from the Dáil and Seanad approving the draft order which is to reserve 32 places in the first year of the bachelor of education degree course in the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, for students who are members of the Church of Ireland or who belong to the broad Protestant tradition.
The making of the order and its laying before the Houses of the Oireachtas arises from the provisions of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and is designed to ensure that the rights and interests of the college and schools with a Protestant ethos and the students in those schools are provided for.
The Employment Equality Act 1998 prohibits discrimination on a wide range of grounds, including religion. While the Act deals primarily with discrimination in employment, it also extends to discrimination in vocational training. Vocational training is defined as any system of instruction that enables a person to acquire the knowledge for the carrying on of an occupational activity. Teacher training obviously falls within this definition.
For many years, probably since its foundation, the Church of Ireland College of Education has provided training in primary school teaching exclusively to students who come from the Church of Ireland and the broader Protestant tradition. The purpose of this practice is to ensure that there is available to schools under Protestant ownership a sufficient number of teachers who themselves come from a Protestant background and are trained in an institution with a Protestant ethos. Most primary schools in the State are privately owned, publicly funded, denominational schools. This system of denominational education is underpinned by the Constitution. Collateral to the rights of the religious denominations to conduct schools with a particular ethos is their right to ensure that there is available to them a corps of staff belonging to and trained in the particular religious denomination of the school. If such staff were not available, the constitutional rights to free profession of religion and the conduct of denominational schools would be seriously impaired.
To avoid imposing what would in effect be unconstitutional restrictions on the right of denominations in this regard, section 12 of the Employment Equality Act 1998 which prohibits discrimination in vocational training makes two exceptions. It provides that for the purpose of ensuring the availability of nurses to hospitals and teachers to primary schools which have a denominational character and in order to maintain the religious ethos of the hospital and schools, the prohibition of discrimination does not apply in certain circumstances.
In the case of primary schools, the section provides that an education or training body may apply to the Minister for Education and Science for an order permitting the body to reserve places on the vocational training course. The Minister, with the consent of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, may then make an order allowing the body to reserve such number of places to meet the needs for teachers in primary schools as is considered appropriate.
The Church of Ireland College of Education has made an application on behalf of the college for the reservation of 32 places in the college for the academic year 2003 to 2004, up to 2007 to 2008, for students who are members of recognised churches in the Protestant tradition, essentially in this instance, the Church of Ireland, the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church. The college makes the case that the reservation of 32 places, which is at present the full complement of the first year places in the college and is the maximum number of first year students that can be accommodated in the college, should be made in order to provide sufficient teachers for Protestant schools over the next number of years.
The grounds for the request as put forward by the college are as follows: a substantial volume of correspondence from individual schools and boards of management to the Church of Ireland Board of Education regarding the difficulties in obtaining qualified applications for vacant teaching posts; an increasing number of retirements, teachers on secondment or availing of job-sharing and career breaks as well as an increase in the number of posts for learning support and other specialist teachers; an analysis of college records relating to the age profile of teachers in the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist primary schools, indicates that a significant number of serving teachers will reach optional or compulsory retirement age in the next five years. It is estimated that in the five year period from 2003 to 2008, a total of 114 teachers will become eligible for early retirement or will reach compulsory retirement age.
The joint committee went into private session at 11.32 a.m. and resumed in public session at11.33 a.m.