Sir, - I would like to welcome the sentiments expressed by Micheal Martin (The Irish Times, September 25th) and his recognition that the demand for Educate Together schools will continue to grow. I also welcome the commitments that he made on January 22nd this year in Galway, which were greeted as an "historic move in multi-denominational education" by your paper and given great prominence on the front page of your edition of January 23rd. I would appreciate it if you would allow me to correct the growing impression that we as a sector have achieved our long sought-after fair treatment by the State in the matter of funding.
Since the announcement in January, the Department of Education has not, to our knowledge, made a single decision enacting the commitments made. Neither have we any tangible evidence that the Minister has "taken a number of decisions directly aimed at assisting the parents' groups who have been leading this movement", as he states in your paper. On the contrary, our situation as a sector has significantly worsened. We remain at the bottom of the educational pile in the matter of funding, with an additional burden of seeing our fund raising efforts being drastically effected by the general public mistakenly believing that we have at last achieved significant State funding.
The first multi-denominational school in this state, Dalkey School Project, is facing financial difficulties due to the failure of the Department to sanction permanent recognition of its second school in Monkstown. Galway School Project is no nearer securing its permanent site, and major issues are affecting the future of schools in Dublin (city and county), Kildare, Cork and Clare.
In effect, our sector as a whole has been promised much, but in the eight months since the Minister's announcement we have seen nothing concrete. It is now facing difficulties on a scale that are genuinely unprecedented in our history. - Yours, etc., Paul Rowe,
Chairperson, Educate Together, South Circular Road, Dublin 8.