The Christian Brothers are finalising plans to hand over their 100-plus schools to a charitable trust run by lay people. The move will signal the end of the Brothers' day-to-day involvement in the running of the schools, a tradition dating back over two centuries.
The Brothers say their departure is unrelated to the various controversies on child abuse. It is, they insist, a response to the huge decline in the number of Brothers. Many of those who remain are well past retirement age. In all, 109 second-level and 29 primary schools will pass from the control of the Brothers to a new charitable trust (the Edmund Rice Schools Trust - ERST). The schools will continue to be run by boards of management which in future will be appointed by the trust.
The trust will be set up as a limited company and registered at the company's office.
Br John Heneghan, director of the ERST project, said it was hoped to have the new structures in place and to have got approval for them from Church and State before the end of 2007. Preparation and consultations on the plan have been taking place over the past two years with parents, teachers, pupils and other relevant parties, he said.
Most Christian Brothers' property will be transferred "outright" to the trust, Br Heneghan said, while the remainder would be leased to it.
Numbers on the trust would be no fewer than nine and they would be "significant people" committed to an ethos which would promote an approach to education that goes beyond the utilitarian. On a practical level, the move is likely to make little discernable difference to pupils in Christian Brothers schools.
The decision comes at a time when enrolment figures in many Christian Brothers schools in Dublin have declined.
Some of the most venerable schools in the city, such as O'Connells, Synge Street, St Josephs, Fairview and St Vincents, Glasnevin , have all seen their enrolment figures decline by up to 60 per cent in the past 20 years.
The decline is linked to changing demographics in some city areas but also to the drift towards fee-paying schools and grind schools.
The Brothers have been one of the most powerful and influential forces in Irish education. Several taoisigh, including Bertie Ahern and Charles Haughey, along with a large number of senior civil servants, were educated in their schools.
Minister for Children Brian Lenihan paid tribute yesterday to the contribution made to Ireland by the Christian Brothers.
The Brothers did fantastic things in education. They put the salaries that the State paid them back into the system. They lived lives of great poverty in an Ireland that was a very poor Ireland, he said in Dublin .
"They educated the people. And many, many people who got those educational opportunities got them because of the Christian Brothers. And I think that can never be denied to them," he said.
"On the other hand, of course, there were abuses. And we have commissions looking at those abuses and compensation arrangements are being put into place. We have to confront that reality in our past," Mr Lenihan added.
