The Department of Education is currently investigating claims from a teacher within one of CEIST (Catholic Education An Irish Schools' Trusts) schools.
A number of reports have emerged from Catholic education trust CEIST of misconduct and discrimination within their schools in Ireland.
A teacher has provided information to the Department of Education in the form of a full protective disclosure.
The whistleblower came forward after previously making official complaints to Education Minister Richard Bruton about CEIST, which is involved in running 110 schools nationwide.
The main case that the whistleblower refers to is one of an unmarried mother being denied a promotion from teacher to Deputy Principal by a nun who deemed her not right for the role as a result of her marital history.
The nun, whose intervention led to the mother being denied the job, was the principal of the school where the woman worked as a teacher and was a named referee on the woman’s job application.
According to the nun, the woman’s ‘lifestyle did not reflect the standards of the school and would send out the wrong message to the young female students’.
It also emerged that the candidate was the only internal applicant for the job within the school, and was considered the leading contender for the position after the second round of interviews.
CEIST agreed at a Workplace Relations Commission hearing that the discrimination had indeed occurred and the whistleblower’s version of events stood undisputed.
The whistleblower also took the opportunity at the commission to elaborate on her first-hand experience of this discrimination:
“I was asked to step outside the room by the chairperson and informed that the nun would not countenance the appointment of the internal candidate, given that she had had a baby out of wedlock some number of years earlier.”
Minister for Education Richard Bruton has responded to the allegations: “First of all, there is an investigation underway so I can’t comment on the detail of any individual allegation but on the wider front, we will not tolerate discrimination of any sort within our education system and we have laws and procedures to protect that.”
The story of the unmarried mother is one of a number of instances of discrimination and corruption within the organisation revealed by the whistleblower.
A case from another CEIST school included that a man was also denied a promotion the role of Deputy Principal, despite being the best candidate for the job, because he was a Protestant.
The rationale for the decision came from a nun sitting on the interview board who claimed that the man's appointment would ‘send out the wrong message’.
Also, the man’s interview scores were allegedly manipulated and downgraded so that he fell from first to third place.
When asked for a statement on the investigation, a spokesperson for CEIST told The Irish Post, "As a policy and practice, Ceist and all schools of which we are the patron are equal opportunity employers."
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