When parents seek to remove their child from religious instruction, many schools ignore their constitutional and legal duty to respect this right, and their legal duty to do this without shortening the school day of any student concerned. Some schools tell parents that they can’t...
The Constitutional rights that were meant to protect Irish families from religious teaching in publicly funded schools are simply ignored, and have been undermined over the years. Not only do our children not have access to non denominational secular education but they don’t have access...
Atheist Ireland has made the following submission to the NCCA Consultation on the Draft Primary Curriculum Specifications. Introduction This submission focuses on two areas of the draft specifications: Social and Environmental Education (Geography and History) Wellbeing (Physical Education and Social, Personal and Health Education) Both...
Atheist Ireland has written the following letter to the Minister for Justice, Taoiseach, Tanaiste, and Minister for Equality regarding the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill and the recent Sokolovskiy v. Russia case at the European Court of Human Rights....
In February 2018 the School Governance Section of the Dept of Education issued Circular Letter 0013/2018. Circular Letters are ‘policy’; the purpose of the policy was to oblige ETBs to offer students, who are not taking religion, another subject. At the time we were told...
The state pays out approx 10 million a year for mainly catholic chaplains in ETB schools (there are some COI chaplains). Chaplains are paid by the state to help Catholic parents with the religious formation of their children. We know this because there was a...
The phrase ‘faith formation’ in schools is not in the Constitution. Whether you refer to faith formation classes, or faith formation in the general atmosphere of the school, there is simply no Article in our Constitution that uses the term ‘faith formation’. It is not...
The Irish National Teachers Association has voted to lobby to remove a religious education qualification that is required by all teachers who wish to teach in Catholic primary schools. They will also form a task force to look at the future of primary school patronage....
The recent referendums have shown that words in the constitution matter. The Supreme Court has found that children have a Constitutional right to not attend any course in religious instruction. The Supreme Court also said that this right is based on the conscience of parents....
Opening up 400 multi denominational schools throughout the country will never achieve pluralism in education. The policy of successive governments is to segregate children in some areas of the country on the basis of their parents’ religion. Even if the state opened up 400 multi...
