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Message: <blockquote data-quote="scolairebocht" data-source="post: 93884" data-attributes="member: 8">[ATTACH=full]5306[/ATTACH]I find that the argument against the take over of Irish Catholic schools is so prejudged by people, based on very inaccurate media coverage over a long period of time, that it seems better to phrase this as an analogy with the GAA, obviously the Irish sports body governing Irish national games. What I am suggesting here is that there could be an argument to 'diversify' Ireland away from its obsession with Gaelic games, and that many of the sports facilities owned by the GAA around Ireland ought to be taken away from them and given to minority sports and their communities. It is a fictional - I hope! - scenario but quite closely analogous to this ongoing debate about Irish schools.Too many sports facilities in Ireland owned by one sporting group, in a diverse countryFirst of all the complaint would be, that since we live in a diverse country then it is a complete scandal that most parishes and towns around Ireland do not have cricket pitches etc, to accommodate the huge Muslim and other communities out there. These 'minority' (actually they are the majority in many places now) groups are being victimised by having to travel distances to attend their sports when you have perfectly good GAA pitches around the place which therefore should be handed over to them.Hopefully people would be scandalised by that kind of argument. The vast majority of Irish people over a long period of time, want and wanted to support these Irish sports and not cricket etc and what is wrong with the majority of Irish people creating and patronising their majority sport? Of course you have most towns and villages in Ireland with GAA pitches because most towns and villages were occupied by Irish people who wanted these facilities, what could be more natural, just or proper? And the corollary is, that to claim 'diversity' as some grounds of the theft of these facilities would be very unjust, improper and a very unnatural thing to do, surely.GAA as a state funded bodyThe second argument you could hear, in this admittedly fictional - as yet - debate, is that since the GAA is state funded then they are compelled to hand over their facilities to minority groups like this.Yes the GAA is now, to quite a large extent, state funded. The County GAA teams are paid by the state in Ireland now, and have been for many years. The national GAA authorities are also funded by the state, for example the Irish Times on the 10th Feb 2022 reported that they received €50 million over the previous two years ( <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaa-reports-two-year-deficit-of-25-2m-despite-government-funding-1.4798903" target="_blank">https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaa-reports-two-year-deficit-of-25-2m-despite-government-funding-1.4798903</a> .) Also frequent miscellaneous development type grants are given to GAA clubs, here for example is a list of state grants given to GAA clubs to develop 'walking track' facilities: <a href="https://assets.gov.ie/253685/e7467dab-5fd5-4198-8e1f-5ecc7f46613f.pdf" target="_blank">https://assets.gov.ie/253685/e7467dab-5fd5-4198-8e1f-5ecc7f46613f.pdf</a> , and, as another random example, Castlerahan GAA Club in Co. Cavan in Feb 2024 were looking for €200,000 from the state to fund their latest pitch and facilities improvements: <a href="https://www.independent.ie/regionals/cavan/news/cavan-gaa-club-seeks-200k-sports-capital-grant-to-kick-start-ambitious-1m-redevelopment-plans/a963614512.html" target="_blank">https://www.independent.ie/regionals/cavan/news/cavan-gaa-club-seeks-200k-sports-capital-grant-to-kick-start-ambitious-1m-redevelopment-plans/a963614512.html</a> .    But I would suggest that there is two simple counter arguments to this:Firstly the majority of tax payers are also GAA supporters, or at least a lot more of them than cricket supporters, and have been for many years, so what is wrong with their taxes going to fund GAA facilities? By what criteria does somebody decide that just because some of the funds going from the local communities to fund local facilities, go through the tax system, that therefore the 'minority' groups are entitled to half of it or at least a grossly disproportionate part of that tax take than GAA supporters? Secondly it should be argued, that while yes there is a lot of state funding in the GAA system, now, and has been for many years, it still pales completely into insignificance when set against the gigantic amount of voluntary labour and land and money that poured into the GAA from local communities for the best part of a century and half. Hopefully then people can see that this also, is a very unjust and improper argument to make.This analogy applies to Irish Catholic SchoolsYes, believe it or not, this is entirely analogous to the situation involving Catholic schools in Ireland today. The same arguments, that, hopefully, seem scandalously unjust when set against the GAA, are routinely used against these schools without much counter debate.Yes its true that in most towns and villages in Ireland you get a disproportionate number of Catholic schools as opposed to other faiths, or none, of course you do? What's so surprising about that in a country which is still overwhelming Catholic? Isn't that the natural, logical and just arrangement you would expect in a country with an overwhelming majority of Catholics? How is that a scandal in itself?Secondly it doesn't seem to be commonly appreciated to what extent these schools were created out of  the voluntary land, labour and money over many generations from generous minded and hard working Irish Catholics. It is by no means the case that these were all created by the Irish state at any time, generally speaking the land allocated for these schools, and to a huge extent the voluntary labour in keeping them running and putting up the funds to build them, was the voluntary labour of local Irish Catholics, particularily by nuns, brothers and parish priests. By what right does anybody have to steal these institutions from Irish Catholics now, to make way for atheist or Muslim schools etc? Yet that is exactly what the Powers That be in this country are blatantly trying to do.Hopefully therefore by framing the arguments with this analogy with the GAA, people can see how unjust this is, and what follows are the experiences of one Irish priest which shows to what extent these schools are the products of the hard work of successive local Irish Catholics.by Brian Nugent</blockquote>

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