Greg Daly
Parishes forced to support struggling schools
Dozens of Dublin’s primary schools are nearing financial crisis and are set to ask parishes to bail them out over the next few years, The Irish Catholic understands.
Rising insurance cost and reduced State supports have left almost one in 10 Dublin schools either having sought help from local parishes or on the brink of seeking such help.
“The real difficulty is increases in insurance,” Msgr Dan O’Connor, Episcopal Vicar for Education, told The Irish Catholic. “There are three schools in our dioceses that had to get loans from their parishes last year,” he added, continuing, “there are 40 schools in our diocese in serious financial trouble.”
Noting how parishioners in Ringsend have raised thousands through parish bingo events to support the local boys’ and girls’ schools, he said: “Without that money they’d be fairly stuck. It’s all old ladies and old gents – it’s the senior citizens that keep the schools open.”
The background to the crisis is reductions in the State capitation grant, Declan Lawlor of the Dublin Diocesan Education Secretariat told this newspaper, explaining how schools have to pay their general running and maintenance costs from a smaller State grant than they had received in the past.
“Schools are at breaking point and have been a long time, so now they’re feeling the pain,” he said, adding: “There’s at least 30-40 schools that would be in the red or close to it, there’s no reserves left and they’re trying to fundraise or they’re contacting their parishes to try to supplement it.”
He said that as a result of financial pressure, “a lot of principals are stressed trying to keep school doors open, to keep the show up, because if they get a reputation that things are going down, then people will leave and go to another school”.
Schools across the diocese vary in their ability to turn to parents for assistance, Mr Lawlor added. He said that in disadvantaged areas “the capacity to tap into parents who will fundraise or who will get sponsorship from local businesses” is limited. Given this variance, he said it was natural that schools would turn to their parishes for loans or other help.
“When they’ve a problem their first port of call is the parish, because the department had an emergency fund but that’s no longer available,” he said. “It’s a parish school so the next place to go to is the local priest.”
Seamus Mulconry of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association told The Irish Catholic that the CPSMA had heard reports of parishes bailing schools out, with there being anecdotal evidence of parishes assisting 15 schools in various ways across a variety of dioceses, but that more research is needed into this.
“I think we’ll certainly be looking at that in the future,” he said.
“We’d like a better sense of how schools are coping. I think the key point in all of this is that schools are underfunded – the capitation grant only covers 52% of the cost of running a school on average.
“We would urge parents to contact their TD or local representative to ask them to raise this with the Government.
“There is an urgent need to increase funding for schools.”