Northern Ireland’s Employment and Learning Minister has been accused of leading “an attack on all Catholic schools” following his announcement of savage cuts to a leading Catholic teacher training college.

As part of budgetary cutbacks by the Department of Employment and Learning affecting a number of institutions, Alliance Minister Stephen Farry has announced plans to slash a £1.1 million subsidy to St Mary’s College in Belfast, the North’s only Catholic third level institution. The cut subsidy, known as the Small and Specialist Institution Premium, is in addition to other cuts in funing of 10.8% to St Mary’s, resulting in the college’s overall budget facing a 30% downturn.

The move has been condemned both by the education spokesman for the Diocese of Down and Connor, Fr Tim Bartlett and Prof. Peter Finn, the head of St Mary’s, who warned that the college faces possible closure as a result of the cuts.

“The withdrawal of this funding will make St Mary’s unviable,” Prof. Finn told The Irish Catholic newspaper. “The minister knows that and his actions amount to forced integration.”

Describing the move as “highly ideological”, Fr Tim Bartlett said Minister Farry’s decision had “deliberately put St Mary’s in a position of…financial jeopardy [and] undermines pluralism and choice”.

Defending St Mary’s value as an institution, the SDLP’s spokesperson for Employment and Learning, Pat Ramsey pointed out that “there are many parents who want their children to be educated in a Catholic ethos. To meet the parental demand for Catholic schools we need a college of St Mary’s calibre to train teachers.”

In addition to a march by students of St Mary’s to Storment to protest the cuts, supporters of St Mary’s have launched a petition on behalf of the college.