In 1969, They Defended Corporal Punishment. In 2025, It’s Patronage.
In the Irish Times obituary of Dr Cyril Daly, it states that when he campaigned for the abolition of corporal publishment, he has many critics. In fact, a “delegation from the INTO’s Clontarf branch picketed a symposium on the subject in December 1969, carrying placards alleging that Daly was ‘smearing’ teachers.” The obituary comments that people under the age of 40 would scarcely believe this today.
However, every time patronage is discussed in the media, there’s a tendency for the conversation to drift, at best, into the same tired territory — vague reassurances of progress and the notion that parents are central to whether non-Catholic people should be equally respected in primary schools. Well, they don’t say it that way. In an article in Extra.ie today, a number of politicians talked about their own “anecdotal evidence,” which Cathal Crowe, TD, said “would suggest parents are happy with their children attending schools of Catholic patronage.”
He wasn’t the only one. Even the supposed villain in the story, the new Minister for Education, Helen McEntee put parents at the centre of the decision-making process as to whether schools should be places where faith formation takes place. She said:
I think parents should have a choice as to where they send their child [to school], and whether their child will have their Communion, their Confirmation, or anything beyond that. And my objective as Education Minister is to make sure that parents have a choice.
The pushback for something that most politicians, commentators and the general public agree with, reeks of something else. Perhaps they are sniffing out McEntee for blood given her unpopular campaigning for hate speech laws during her tenure as Justice Minister. Whatever it is, it’s embarrassing to see politicians saying things like:
- Further plans to divest schools of religious patronage would be ‘bizarre’. (Barry Ward, TD)
- Parishes ‘do not have the resources’ to take on the responsibility of providing sacraments and that he would be in favour of Communions and Confirmations being facilitated by schools. (Cathal Crowe, TD)
- Any new plans must remain parent-led. We shouldn’t overreach on this. (Padraig O’Sullivan, TD)
Even the Catholic Church leaders no longer believe that schools should continue preparing children for sacraments. Many have already made moves to ensure preparation for sacraments is facilitated outside of the school day. It’s astonishing to me that the incoming chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Education holds the view that because parishes “don’t have the resources” that teachers should take it on . It’s not just outdated, it’s discriminatory. It assumes that schools, including teachers who may not be Catholic, and children from a wide range of backgrounds, should prop up a religious system that fewer and fewer families engage with.
Look at the numbers.
- According to the latest CSO marriage statistics, only 31% of marriages now take place in Catholic churches. Secular weddings are now more popular.
- In the 2022 Census, only 53% of 25–29 year olds identified as Catholic. That’s not even devout Catholics. That includes cultural Catholics.
- The INTO survey on religion in schools, published last week, found that only 4% of teachers believe they should be preparing children for sacraments.
And yet, in 2025, TDs are still suggesting that teachers — in publicly funded schools — should take on this work. As I said, it’s astonishing.
This isn’t about being anti-religion. It’s about recognising that we now live in a pluralist, multifaith, and increasingly non-religious society. Public education should reflect that. Teachers are not catechists or missionaries. Schools should not be sites for faith formation. If parishes are struggling, it’s not the job of the State to quietly shift that onto teachers — especially when it violates their rights and the rights of children and families who do not share that faith. In fact the church’s own GRACE Report showed that roughly half of teachers under the age of 50 reported they did not believe in a personal god.
Divestment was supposed to fix all this. It was never going to work and I’ve explored this in huge detail.
It’s a dead horse, and we should stop flogging it.
Instead of pretending the current system can be gradually adjusted, we need to face the reality that the patronage model is broken. It was never designed for diversity. It has no credible future in a modern democracy.
If anything, the TDs defending the status quo sound eerily like those defending corporal punishment in the 1960s. Seán Brosnahan, a senator in 1969, described campaigns to end corporal punishment as “vicious” and “embarrassing.” He was wrong then. And those defending faith formation in public schools today are wrong now.
Ireland has changed. Its education system needs to catch up.
