Parents, rather than the Church are the ones who must decide which, if any, Catholic schools must be handed over to another patron body. 

After a meeting with the Department of Education, a delegation from the Irish Bishops’ Conference and the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) said that any initiative for a change would have to come from individual school communities. 

It was the first formal gathering to discuss a framework for transferring schools to other patron bodies. 

The Catholic Church has said that it sees its ongoing involvement in the day-to-day running of 92 per cent of the country’s 3,200 primary schools as untenable in an age of greater cultural diversity and fewer priests. 

The department invited the Catholic school patrons to hear their proposals for change, first mooted about 18 months ago, but the bishops don’t believe the next step is up to them. 

In a joint statement afterwards, the meeting was described as “wide-ranging and constructive”. 

Both the Catholic patrons and the department “agreed it was essential to engage in planning for change in a way that takes account of demographics, settlement patterns and diversity of provision to accommodate parental choice”. 

Chair of the Bishop Commission for Education, Bishop Leo O’Reilly said after the meeting that “one of the things we emphasised strongly was the importance of the role of parents in all of this and the need to respect parental choice”. 

The delegation also included Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Bishop Brendan Kelly and Sr Eithne Woulfe. 

Bishop O’Reilly said: “Obviously, we are committed to providing Catholic education where parents want it, but we are also committed to diversity and recognise that need.” 

He said the process would not happen overnight but they were anxious to advance it as speedily as possible. 

He made it clear that the bishops saw it as a ground-up, rather than a top-led initiative, and they also wanted the benefit of all information available on school populations before moving forward. 

The agreed next step is for the department to use its database and other information to identify locations where an implementation framework could be developed in consultation with stakeholders, such as parents. 

Bishop O’Reilly said he hoped this would enable them to look at the relevant areas, and he did not think the level of potential change could be “quantified mathematically”, or that they could put a timescale on it. 

He said at the moment they were not aware of any school seeking a change of patron. 

Bishop O’Reilly also indicated that the Catholic Church would like a greater role as patrons in new second-level schools. The Catholic Church is patron of only one of 31 schools opened since 1992. 

He expressed disquiet that in assigning patrons to new schools at second level, the Department of Education had “no clear criteria that we are aware of , and no clear process”.