The Department of Education has given the go-ahead for five new primary schools in the Dublin metropolitan area. None of these, however, will be denominational schools.

Three schools will be run by the non-denominational patron, Educate Together, while An Foras Pátrúnachta, which is an inter-denominational patron for gaelscoileanna, will run two of them.

Educate Together will open schools in the Dublin suburbs of Blanchardstown west, Mulhuddart and Ashbourne, Co Meath. An Foras Pátrúnachta will open one inter-denominational school in west Dublin and one in Ashbourne.

Outgoing Minister for Education Mary Coughlan approved the schools last week.

The Department’s decision to award patronage of three of the five schools to Educate Together was welcomed by the group’s chief executive, Paul Rowe.

The Department has drawn up a list of areas where new schools will be needed over the next decade.

In non-denominational schools children are taught religion outside school hours while in inter-denominational schools children are taught one another’s religion during school time. Educate Together describes itself as a ‘multi-denominational’ body.

According to The Irish Times today, earlier this year an internal department report said it is was no longer practical for “every student to be provided with access to a place in a school operated by a patron of their choice”.

In future, it says patrons must be able to show clear public demand for their proposed schools. It also says patrons must demonstrate that the demand for any proposed new school is not already being met.

Negotiations between the Catholic Church and the Department of Education as to which schools the Church might transfer to alternative patronage are ongoing.

The new programme for government promises a forum on patronage and pluralism in the primary sector which will sit for one year. This has been a long-term demand of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation. It is also something that has been sought by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

The forum’s recommendations will be drawn up into a White Paper for consideration and implementation by government.

The Department of Education has not approved a new Catholic secondary school in nearly 20 years.

In an address in 2008, the then head of the Chairman of the Bishops’ Commission on Education, Bishop Leo O’Reilly, expressed concern at the Department’s attitude to the voluntary sector in education.

He noted that “no new voluntary secondary schools had been established for almost a generation with the exception of two small Gael Colaisti under the patronage of An Foras Pátrúnachta”.

“There seems to be a policy assumption in the Department of Education that every new school at second level should be multi-denominational,” Bishop O’Reilly said.