How much is the State is Paying the Catholic Church for Reconfiguration?

I’ve never gone through a Freedom of Information Request process despite nearly twenty years of giving out about the Department of Education. However, there was something extremely troubling to me about the latest endeavours from the Department of Education to move schools away from religious control. This process has been a dismal failure since the process started in 2011 with the Pluralism and Patronage Forum where fewer than ten schools were divested from Catholic control to other patrons. The latest plan, the Reconfiguration Process Pilot, is almost exactly the same with a couple of differences.

The first difference is that rather than the public deciding initially what the preferred patronage of their school would be, a decision is initially made between the State and the local Bishop. In all cases until 2023, this was always the Education and Training Boards (ETB) under the Community National School model. This is generally in line with the most recent Programmes for Government which specifically state a preference for this model. It does, however, put education providers such as Educate Together at a serious disadvantage because unless there is a specific request from the school community, they get no opportunity to lobby for the reconfigured school. Moreover, who the school community actually is, is difficult to ascertain and seems to vary depending on who one talks to.

The second difference is, unlike the divestment process, in the reconfiguration process, the Catholic Church always remains the owner of the school building and property. This is much more important because it means that the church does not give up full control of the school. In essence this is identical to the National Maternity Hospital fiasco, where thousands of people protested at the idea that the State would not have ownership over the new building. People were rightly appalled that the government would gift a building worth hundreds of million euro to a private body, in this case a religious order.

Primary schools are no different. While it is unsurprisingly difficult to find figures, schools cost millions of euro to build. If we look at the press release from the Department of Education on 20 school buildings that were to be built in 2022 and 2023 alone, coupled with an article in the Irish Times where building contractors complained about not having enough to complete projects for 2023, a figure of €680m was mentioned. Of the schools in that list all of the them are owned by the Catholic church and these buildings will be gifted to them.

Ultimately, it would not be a stretch to suggest that in the last decade alone, several billion euro worth of property has been gifted to private religious bodies with nothing offered in return except for them to ensure their faith permeates the entirety of the school day.

This excludes all of the rest of the money that the Department of Education pumps into every primary school. People sometimes think that the patron bodies invest money in the school buildings but the truth is that the patron doesn’t put its hand in its pocket at all to maintaining their school building. Every heating bill, every electricity bill, every paint job, every plumbing job, every single thing is paid through the Department of Education (and fundraising.) The church will often argue that this is taxpayer’s money and families that “choose” their schools are taxpayers too, so in effect the church is paying the bill. By this logic, all State buildings should belong to the churches.

Let’s be positive for the moment. The reconfiguration process will tackle one issue. If a church allows itself to be reconfigured to a multidenominational school, it will no longer be allowed to insist that their religious ethos permeates the school day.

However, in return for this, the State will have to pay the church a lease for forty years. After forty years, the church will be allowed to retake control over the school. Let’s say the State offers a token fee of €5,000 per annum for one school building. Over forty years, that will be €200,000 paid to the church for one building. Given that approximately 3,000 primary schools are under church ownership, if we reached a situation where every school would respect every child equally, that’s 3,000 x €5,000 per annum — €15,000,000 per year simply for a school to not teach one faith as the truth.

Rather than guess the figures, I thought a simple question to the Department of Education would provide me with an answer. I first asked the question in January 2022 with a simple email to Norma Foley, the Minister for Education about what I had read regarding the reconfiguration process.

I read that the “reconfiguration” scheme was introduced to speed up the divestment process of Catholic schools to the ETBI. From reading the article, the reconfiguration scheme allows the school to be under a different patron body but the church retains the ownership over the school building and land. Can you confirm whether this is accurate please?

I didn’t receive a reply so tried again 3 weeks later. I got a reply this time:

I have a snooze function on my email so reminded the Minister and her secretary that I was waiting for a reply on March 8th, April 6th and May 10th.

On August 10th, I tried again but was advised to copy in all the TDs who held responsibilities for education. This time I asked 3 specific questions as by now the first school, Nenagh, had completed the first reconfiguration:

1. How much rent has been agreed to be paid to the Catholic church for the use of the school in Nenagh and for how long is this arrangement in place?
2. Has a similar arrangement been in place for the other almost dozen schools that were reconfigured from Catholic patronage to ETB? If so, how much money is being paid to the various dioceses?
3. Given that the State already 100% funds the costs of the buildings that the churches own, what is the rationale for also renting these buildings as well as providing funding for their upkeep?

This time I received a reply, which didn’t answer any of the questions at all. The only reason for the question is because one of the TDs asked it in a PQ in the Dáil and this became the “cut and paste” response from the Department of Education on the issue. I should also note that not a single TD replied to my email.

One of the most outspoken TDs on education, Aodhán O’Riordáin, of the Labour party was notably absent. (Despite his public outcrying, he has only once acknowledged an email from me — after his decision in 2015 not to support an amendment to an Act that would prevent schools from disciplining teachers on the basis of their faith. Earlier this year when he was giving out again about religious control of school, I politely reminded him of when he was in power when he made his decision. His response was to block me. He remains the only public representative to do so.)

You might be wondering what the reply to my questions was. It’s quite long and it doesn’t begin to answer the questions but here are the first couple of paragraphs:

The Government’s objective is to have at least 400 multi-denominational schools in the primary system by 2030 to improve parental choice and the Department is working with stakeholders in this respect. In recent years there has been progress towards increasing the numbers of multi-denominational primary schools with the vast majority of new primary schools established in the last decade having a multi-denominational ethos.

In March 2022 Minister Foley announced that arrangements were being put in place in a number of towns and areas of cities that had no multi-denominational primary schools. This process sought to identify potential schools and to engage with school authorities, school staff and the school communities with a view to agreeing on a transfer of patronage and change of ethos, where there was sufficient demand for this. The pilot process includes 63 schools in the cities of Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick and the Arklow, Athlone, Dundalk and Youghal areas.

As you can see, it is a “cut and paste” response that didn’t go anywhere near answering anything. I replied to say as much and didn’t hear anything back. I tried one more time in April 2023, cc’ing the TDs (none of whom replied either) and realised that I was getting nowhere.

I was advised that the only way I was going to get an answer was through a Freedom of Information request. I had never made one of these before so wasn’t sure what to do. However, it’s surprisingly easy. I sent the following question on 4th July 2023:

To whom it concerns,

Under the freedom of information act, 2014, I am requesting the following data:

The annual sum of the lease being paid to any branch of the Catholic Church by the State under the reconfiguration agreement in all schools reconfigured from Catholic patronage to ETB patronage since the first school in Co. Kerry in 2016. I would like a full breakdown of the annual sum paid by the State for each school reconfigured. I would also like to know the full financial terms of these agreements and how many years they are/will be in place.

13 of these schools can be found on the final page of this document:https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/218518/3db727a9-8b1f-4342-af3d-0541a0581f83.pdf#page=null

Further schools have been reconfigured since Nenagh but if it will cause delay finding those records, I am happy for the first 13 to be sent to me.

Because every FoI request must be replied to within 4 weeks, I did get a reply. The full response can be found here. The reason for rejecting my request fell under:

The public interest arguments in favour of protecting these particular records include:

• premature release could contaminate the decision-making process
• premature release of records would impair the integrity and viability of the decision-making process to a significant or substantial degree without countervailing benefit to the public.

To me, this was bizarre on a number of fronts, most notably that 13 schools have already gone through this process so it is hardly premature.

I was told I could appeal the decision, which I did. If you’re interested, here is the reply. There isn’t much to say about it because it upheld the original decision without expanding on the reasons. That cost me €30. If I wanted, I could continue to appeal by offering more money but I have no faith that I would receive any joy whatsoever.

In the process of going through the FoI request, two Green Party TDs did contact me, but I have to face the reality that this issue is very low down the agenda and nothing further came from my correspondences with them.

Even on Twitter/X, where outrage can be amplified, I could see there was really no further interest in this issue. By the end of November, after sharing my experiences there, I felt it was time to give up.

If this were an exciting blog post, you’d probably think there was a massive twist. Yes, in a fantasy world, the Department of Education would decide that there was absolutely no reason to withhold how much money they are gifting the Catholic Church; or one of the patrons that dealt with the reconfiguration would have been happy to have shared how much money they are receiving for allowing their school to be used for multidenominational education; or perhaps one of the ETB bodies would have approached me and told me what they had agreed to pay. However, the truth is, I got my answer behind the shadows.

Before I even asked the question, back in early 2022, I had been informally told by someone in the know that the lease is between €5,000 and €8,000 per annum. It took until early December of this year (2023) to get that correlated by somebody who was indirectly involved in the process. A third person also correlated the same figure from another body a couple of months before that. Essentially, I got my answer.

We can probably suggest that an average of €6,500 per school per annum is being paid by the State to the Catholic Church under the reconfiguration process. Currently, at the end of 2023, there are 15 or 16 schools involved so this is roughly €100,000 per annum going to the Catholic Church in rent. Some will breathe a sigh of relief and say it’s money well spent, but let’s bring this to its next step:

If the Department of Education somehow reach their target of reconfiguring 400 schools (that’s 12% of school) by 2030, this rent jumps from €100,000 per annum to €2.6m per annum from the education budget.

To put that into perspective, that is the equivalent of roughly 85 Special Needs Assistants not working in schools.

The thing is, even if the government do reach this magic target, it doesn’t really make a dent in offering children or teachers or education staff an education system that is equality-based. 83% of schools will still be under Catholic control (down from 90%) so it won’t be a surprise to anyone if there is pressure for more schools to be reconfigured.

In essence, the simple solution is that all schools need to respect all children equally and no public school should teach one faith as truth. If this becomes a reality under this reconfiguration scheme, we will have roughly 3,000 buildings being leased. A rough calculation is €19.5m per annum (or 650 SNAs not employed in schools.)

So, what would be a proper solution? To me, the answer is quite simple. It would take time but it would solve the problem cleanly and easily.

The idealist in me would love if the churches simply handed over the buildings to the State but I am not naive enough to think this would happen. If I’ve learned nothing else from the whole affair, it seems the Catholic Church, at least, is happy to take a few shekels as long as they get to keep their property.

The answer lies early in this very very long article. The Department of Education invests every single expense every school in the country incurs. With that in mind, the Department of Education should start buying the properties from the church bodies, slowly but surely.

All school buildings and land should be valued; I’d even allow extra for inflation. Over time, whatever monies are given to each school in State funding would be taken as part-payment for the building. If a school needed capital funding, summer works, or emergency funding, this money would also be taken as part payment for the building. Over a number of years, all the buildings and land would be legally owned by the State.

The reconfiguration process allows for forty year leases to be paid to the churches without any change to ownership after that period. With my solution, we could have most schools under State ownership over time, as they should.