O'Keeffe won't reveal legal advice on axing of school grant
Eleanor Petrie, Canon John McCullagh and Christopher Woods, Principal of Wesley College, representatives of the Committee for Management of Protestant Voluntary Secondary Schools, at the Dail yesterday
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Thursday October 22 2009
EDUCATION Minister Batt O'Keeffe has refused to reveal details of any legal advice which prompted the axing of grants to Protestant secondary schools.
And, for the first time, he last night claimed the decision to withdraw the grants worth €2.8m was a "Government decision".
A request by the Irish Independent, made under the Freedom of Information Act, for all correspondence relating to the decision was refused by the Department of Education and Science, which cited "legal professional privilege".
The department also refused to release a briefing document on budgetary proposals regarding fee-paying schools, dated September 26 2008, on the grounds that it was part of the "deliberative process".
The refusal came as pressure mounted on the minister to restore the grants to the country's 21 Protestant schools.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny asked Taoiseach Brian Cowen in the Dail to reveal who had requested the Attorney General's advice.
Mr Kenny claimed Protestant schools were told they would be "got at" by the department after it lost a court case in the High Court last year over the redeployment of teachers from Protestant schools .
Later, the minister had, what the Committee for Management of Protestant Voluntary Secondary Schools called, a "courteous but disappointing" meeting to discuss the crisis.
"The minister's action to overturn 40 years of parity with the free system will deny many Protestant families access to an education in their own ethos. This is as relevant in Dublin as it is throughout the rest of the country," spokeswoman Eleanor Petrie said.
One of the documents that the department refused to release was a memo prepared by Patrick McEvoy, who was on secondment from the Attorney General's office to the department two years ago.
"This document constitutes legal advice as well as containing extracts from earlier legal advice," a spokesman for the minister said.
The department also refused to reveal advice prepared in December 2000 for the Attorney General's office, as well as separate advice provided to Catholic fee-paying schools in 1999. At the time, Catholic schools were considering a legal challenge because they were not getting the same grants as Protestant schools, but they never proceeded with the case.
The minister's spokesman said the grants issue was raised between the minister and the Attorney General ahead of the Budget in October 2008.
"The advice the minister received was consistent with previous legal advice on the constitutionality of providing ancillary grants to Protestant fee-charging schools when they weren't being made available to Catholic fee-charging schools," he said.
Mr O'Keeffe also said it was "understandable" that Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was not aware of the legal advice obtained by the Catholic schools in 1999 because he was working outside the country at the time.
Dr Martin had stated on RTE that he was not aware of any possible legal action by the Church which could have provoked the withdrawal of the grants from Protestant schools.
- JOHN WALSH
Irish Independent
