State primary schools reveal plans to drop First Communion classes

Preparation for First Holy Communion will no longer have a place in state-run classrooms.

The decision was made by the Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI) where it was announced last night at their annual conference. The move comes after much debate over the years as to what place religion should have, or have at all, in school life. Currently state-run schools or Community National Schools are multidenominational - open to all religions and beliefs - where time is allowed for instruction from parents as to what their particular faith requires from the school. It often involves segregating children and at present the Catholic religion makes up half of these requests which amount to around 4000 in each of the 12 state-run schools. According to the Independent, Richard Bruton welcomed the new direction community schools are taking while ETBI general secretary, Michael Moriarty said,

“If everyone wants to be treated equally, belief instruction had to be taken outside the school time.”

This marks a change of patronage from the State (with guidance from the Catholic Church) to local ETBs. Currently, Educate Together schools (81 in total) are those that do not provide any time during the school day for religion, while 96 percent of schools in the country are church-run.