Atheist Ireland is appearing at 6:30 pm today before the Oireachtas Committee on Public Petitions and the Ombudsmen to discuss our Petition ‘To give practical application to the right not to attend religious instruction in school’. It will be live-streamed on the Oireachtas website at 6:30 pm.
Jane Donnelly, Atheist Ireland’s Human Rights Officer, will tell the committee that most schools simply ignore this right. They make children from nonreligious and minority faith families stay in the religion class, despite Article 44.2.4 of the constitution explicitly giving them the right to not attend.
Our Petition argues that the Oireachtas is responsible for vindicating this constitutional right, and it has failed to do so. Instead the Minister for Education leaves it up to each school to deal with the issue.
But a constitutional right is not a policy option for the Minister, patron bodies, or schools to implement or redefine as they see fit.
Also, Article 44.2.4 says legislation providing state aid for schools must make the aid conditional on this right being respected, but existing law does not reflect this constitutional condition.
This gap has meant that the Oireachtas has no oversight of a constitutional condition for state aid to schools.
This is not an abstract issue. It affects real families, in a particularly frustrating way, because the right itself is clear, but the State has declined to vindicate it in practice.
Our public petition is now over two years old. Over that time we have been in regular correspondence with the Oireachtas Petitions Committee and the Department of Education.
Today we are asking the Oireachtas Committee to recognise four points.
- First, the constitutional right exists and its wording is clear.
- Second, the State is not currently giving that right practical effect.
- Third, the Oireachtas should act to ensure that all publicly funded schools, primary and second level, must have a clear, workable, and properly resourced means of enabling children to not attend religious instruction without educational disadvantage.
- Fourth, the constitutional condition for state aid to schools under Article 44.2.4 should be reflected in legislation and the Oireachtas must have oversight of it.
In other words, the State should stop pretending that a child has meaningfully not attended religious instruction when that child is still sitting in the class. If a Constitutional right exists, it should work in the real world.
- Committee meeting details on Oireachtas website
- Livestream of committee meeting at 6:30 pm today
- Text of Atheist Ireland Petition
Our opening speech to the committee will be published on this website at 6:30 pm.