Ruairí Quinn, the Labour Party spokesperson on education, has said parents should have a choice of schools to which they can send their children.

In an article in today’s Irish Times, Mr Quinn said that he agreed with Bishop Leo O’Reilly, the Catholic hierarchy’s education spokesman, that “parents should have a choice, as far as possible, about what kind of school their children will attend”.

Mr Quinn argued for an “orderly transfer of Catholic patronage of some primary schools to other patron bodies” which would “enable Catholic parents to have Catholic schools which would deliver Catholic education for observant Catholic parents and their children”.

BR> Mr Quinn’s comments come in the wake of a poll published in the Irish Times yesterday showing 61 per cent of people in favour of transferring control of primary schools from the Catholic Church to the State.

According to the poll, carried out by MRBI, 61 per cent of people said the church should give up control of the school system, 28 per cent said it should maintain its position and 11 per cent had no opinion on the matter.

The poll focused on the fall out following the Murphy report into the handling of child sex abuse by the Dublin archdiocese.

However, reacting to The Irish Times poll, the Iona Institute said it ignored the critical question concerning the future of schools. “The question isn’t whether the Church or the State should control our primary schools, but what do parents want?”

A poll conducted last summer by Red C on behalf of The Iona Institute, shows that a clear majority of people (72 percent) “support the principle of parental choice with regard to schools.”

The statement continued, “The right of parents to have their children educated according to their own beliefs is enshrined in both domestic and international law. There are undoubtedly too many Catholic schools at present compared to the real level of demand for them, but nonetheless publicly-funded denominational schools have a right to exist.”

It went on: “This isn’t an ‘either/or’ issue, that is, it isn’t a question of either the Church or the State running our schools. Instead, and within reason, there should be different kinds of publicly-funded schools reflecting the wishes of parents, as there is in England where a third of publicly-funded schools are denominational.”

The Red C poll commissioned by The Iona Institute asked respondents to choose between two statements, ‘In a modern society all publicly-funded schools should be run by the State’ and ‘Parents should be allowed the right to choose from a variety of publicly-funded schools for their children, including Church-run schools’..

According to the findings, 72 per cent chose the statement favouring parental choice, while 25 percent chose the statement favouring State control. 

A previous Red C poll for The Iona Institute, conducted in April 2008, also asked people what kind of school they would send their children to, given a choice. Exactly half said they would send their children to a denominational school.