Who are they and how are they appointed?

The GBMDS Patron is a company subject to company law and has charitable status. Membership of the Patron is open to all who share the goals of the school. Anyone can join as a member for €5 per academic year.

The Patron Executive (PE) is the committee appointed by the Annual General Meeting each year to do the business of the Patron over the year. 

Where do they meet

and when?

The Patron typically meets once a year in June at an AGM.

The PE meets about six times a year, usually in the staff room in the school.

What is the Patron responsible for:

Where Principals and Boards of Management run schools – the Patron is the legal entity whose ethos is given life in the school.

All schools of any kind have to have a Patron; this is the group which has legal responsibility for the existence of the school and is the group to which the Department of Education and Skills gives the right to set up a school. In most cases the Patron forms out of that group of people who first got together to create a school.

The Patron thus has formal responsibilities for the ethos of the school, for the underlying infrastructure of the school, and is a key signoff point for new policy developments.

Patrons appoint Boards of Management, the present Board being appointed in 2011.

The Patron has two formal sub-committees – the Buildings Subcommittee and the Ethics Subcommittee, as a reflection of the formal importance of these two aspects of a school. The membership of such subcommittees is usually drawn from the school community and is not restricted to Patron members.

By joining the Patron you get a way to contribute to school policy through proposing motions and voting at the Annual General Meeting or at any Extraordinary General Meeting. Any major developments of the school in the future have to go to a Patron general meeting for agreement before they can proceed.