THE GOVERNMENT WILL review decisions to grant capital funding to fee-paying schools in Ireland according to the Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, Quinn said that with money scare, the capital funding for such schools would have to be looked and that said that funding would have to be prioritised for schools that need it most.
He added:
Nothing can continue the way it was, because the country is in receivership.
His comments came after RTÉ published figures showing that over €8 million had been given in building grants to the country’s wealthiest schools by the Department of Education over the last three and a half years.
This is on top of the €100 million per year that fee-paying schools receive in teachers’ wages which amounts to over €1 billion in wages given to fee-paying schools since 2000.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland has already called for the annual funding of teachers’ to be withdrawn describing it as a “funding of privilege” and said that fee-paying schools were engaged in “educational apartheid”.
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