{"id":2121,"date":"2023-05-31T09:12:53","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T08:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/divestment-programme-must-be-reviewed-after-census-revealed-sharp-drop-in-numbers-of-catholics\/"},"modified":"2023-09-15T10:41:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T09:41:28","slug":"divestment-programme-must-be-reviewed-after-census-revealed-sharp-drop-in-numbers-of-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/ga\/divestment-programme-must-be-reviewed-after-census-revealed-sharp-drop-in-numbers-of-catholics\/","title":{"rendered":"Divestment Programme Must Be Reviewed After Census Revealed Sharp Drop In Numbers of Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>The monopoly control\u00a0of the Catholic Church on our primary schools is a relic from another era<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Education Minister must review the school divestment programme after the Census revealed a sharp drop in the number of people who call themselves Catholic, according to Social Democrats Education Spokesperson Gary Gannon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Census has revealed that the proportion of people who view themselves as Catholics fell sharply between 2016 and 2022, from 79% to 69%. Meanwhile, 14% of the population say they have no religion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDespite this, nearly 90% of our primary schools remain Catholic. Parents should not be forced to send their children to a school with Catholic ethos, which they do not subscribe to, because of a shortage of multi-denominational schools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government\u2019s divestment programme claims it will divest 400 schools, from Catholic patronage, by 2030. Given the current abysmally low delivery rate, there is no hope of this target being met.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast year, just one school divested from Catholic patronage. It became just the 14th school to divest patronage to multi-denominational. Given the snail\u2019s pace of this process, does the Minister really believe that 384 schools will divest in the next seven years?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe divestment programme is clearly flawed and is not working. The government must now conduct a review of the divestment process and determine what needs to change to make it work for parents, children and school communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe disproportionate influence of the Catholic Church on our primary schools is a relic from another era. The government cannot just sit back and allow this monopoly control to continue into the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>31 May, 2023<\/p>\n<p>Ends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The monopoly control\u00a0of the Catholic Church on our primary schools is a relic from another era The Education Minister must review the school divestment programme after the Census revealed a sharp drop in the number of people who call themselves Catholic, according to Social Democrats Education Spokesperson Gary Gannon. \u201cThe Census has revealed that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,316,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-gary-gannon","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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