A Northern Ireland primary teacher has used a little-known law to withdraw from delivering Religious Education. The teacher, Javed Love, is now partnering with Northern Ireland Humanists to guide other teachers in how to do the same.
But the situation is different in the Republic of Ireland, where our employment law prioritises the ethos rights of religious schools over the conscience rights of their employees.
The contrasting laws
Article 22 of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 allows teachers in most controlled schools to be excused from delivering Religious Education and taking part in Collective Worship where this conflicts with their conscience.
By contrast, Section 37.1 of our Employment Equality Act 1998 allows a school to give give more favourable treatment on religion grounds to maintain its ethos, and to take action reasonably necessary to prevent an employee undermining its ethos.
The Irish Supreme Court found this ethos clause to be constitutional when it was referred to it in 1997, even though other provisions in the then Bill were found to be unconstitutional.
The Northern Ireland law applies only to most controlled schools, which are managed and funded by the Education Authority through a Board of Governors. That’s 45% of Northern Ireland schools. It doesn’t apply to other schools. 38% are Catholic maintained, run by Catholic trustees. The rest are voluntary, other maintained, or integrated.
In the Republic of Ireland, 88% of primary schools are publicly funded but run by a Catholic patron body with a Catholic ethos. About 5% each are Church of Ireland or multi-denominational. The rest are run by various minority religions, and none are secular or non-denominational.
Conscience rights in Ireland
The Irish constitution protects freedom of conscience, and the right for children to attend publicly funded schools without attending religious instruction. And the Education Act 1998 allows pupils to not attend any instruction contrary to their parents’ conscience.
As we know, these rights for parents and children are not vindicated in practice, which Atheist Ireland is campaigning to change. But with regard to teachers, whose rights Atheist Ireland also campaigns for, our law does not offer even those protections in principle.
The argument for this religious discrimination against teachers is to uphold the right of (mostly) Catholic parents to a religious education for their children. This is done by protecting the (mostly) Catholic ethos of Irish schools.
In the Enoch Burke case (independently of the misconduct, trespass, and contempt issues), the Patron said the principal acted in accordance with the school’s ethos in asking teachers to use preferred pronouns. One of the judges said, on this issue, the rights of parents and their children take precedence over the rights of teachers.
Atheist Ireland will continue to campaign for the conscience rights of all parents, pupils, and teachers in Irish schools, and for a secular education system that treats everybody equally regardless of their religious or philosophical beliefs.