This is from the Admission policy of Larkin Community College, a second level ETB school. There is no legal basis for the supposed distinction it makes between religious instruction and religious education. It is important to understand that our school does not provide ‘religious instruction’...
Atheist Ireland has for years been raising the issue of objective sex education with the United Nations. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child included the following in its recent concluding observations about Ireland: Adolescent health (b) Integrate comprehensive, age-appropriate and evidence-based education...
The oireachtas, not the Government or the Department of Education or schools, is responsible for regulating the Constitutional right to not attend religious instruction in schools. That is why statutory guidelines are needed, passed by the Oireachtas, not just Government policies, or circular letters from...
Atheist Ireland welcomes today’s concluding observations about Ireland from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. We were in Geneva last month when the Committee questioned Ireland, and the Committee has made all of the recommendations we asked for. The UN has...
Two years ago the government proposed a new public holiday to mark the efforts of frontline workers during the Covid pandemic. The most obvious way to do that would have been to call it the Frontline Workers Public Holiday, or the February Bank Holiday dedicated...
This week Atheist Ireland was in Geneva for the examination of Ireland under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Atheist Ireland, along with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland, made a Submission to the UN Committee in relation...
It is now a decade since Atheist Ireland hosted two international conferences in Dublin. Both conferences agreed declarations on the principles that we should use to advance secularism. The first in 2011 was the World Atheist Convention. That conference agreed the Dublin Declaration on Secularism...
The Central Statistics Office is asking for submissions on improving the census questions for 2027. Atheist Ireland has made the following submission. If you agree with our arguments, please make a submission yourself supporting them. We recommend the following changes to the religion question: the...
The Minister for Education, Norma Foley, still has no plans to amend the Education Act 1998 to guarantee that relationship and sexuality education will be delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner and not through religious ethos of schools. Atheist Ireland has made submissions...
Atheist Ireland has been granted special consultative status at the United Nations. We are the first national-level atheist organisation to get this status. It means we can engage with the UN Economic and Social Council, Human Rights Council, General Assembly, and Secretariat, in order to...
