Education

2 December 2015

Socialist Party/AAA to propose votes today on Atheist Ireland Schools Equality PACT issues

Today the Dail will vote on the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, which will protect Catholic LGBT teachers at the expense of reinforcing the right to discriminate against atheist and minority faith teachers of any sexuality. Following a meeting last week with Atheist Ireland, Ruth Coppinger,...

23 November 2015

Why Do Bishops Charge So Much For School Text Books?

“Grow In Love” – 20% more expensive than next priced text book. The Irish Catholic Bishop’s Conference, through their agency Veritas Publications, are the monopoly provider of religious text books to all Catholic schools in Ireland. In the context of this monopoly, their new “Grow...

25 October 2015

Archbishop of Dublin to decide if five year old boys are right kind of Catholic for school

The Admission policy of a publicly funded National School, St. John the Baptist in Clontarf, states that the Archbishop of Dublin, “shall be the person who decides whether a boy is a member of a Church which is in full communion with the Church of...

20 October 2015

Educate Together distances itself from its own policy and ethos

An Educate Together AGM motion this year called for admission policies that, if implemented, would indirectly discriminate against Catholics. Atheist Ireland opposes this. Educate Together has published a statement that attributes absurdity, dishonesty and ignorance to Atheist Ireland’s analysis of this. We agree with Educate...

18 October 2015

Professor Conway invents a bogeyman of an Irish “subcultural secularist elite”

In a recent talk to the Iona Institute, Rev. Professor Eamonn Conway, head of Theology and Religious Studies at Mary Immaculate College, invented a bogeyman that he calls a “subcultural secular elite” to frighten Catholics into thinking that their control of the education system is...

17 October 2015

Discrimination Against Catholics Should Be Opposed Too

The Catholic Church retains a virtual monopoly on school patronage in Ireland. They use this monopoly to discriminate against non-Catholic citizens within our public education system. This is a scandal, which must end. However, the solution to this discrimination is not to create an equal...

8 October 2015

Bishops Secretly Awarded €500,000 Annually, in Public Contracts

Atheist Ireland has uncovered evidence of excess of €500,000 of public funds awarded in secret to the Catholic Church. Atheist Ireland has submitted Freedom of Information requests to a small sample of the Irish third level educational institutions, which deliver courses to adult citizens. These...

30 September 2015

Atheist Ireland tells OSCE meeting in Warsaw of religious discrimination against atheists and minority faiths

Atheist Ireland made two formal contributions to today’s OSCE human rights conference in Warsaw, highlighting religious discrimination against atheists and members of minority faiths in Ireland and throughout the OSCE. Jane Donnelly spoke on discrimination in the Irish education system, and Michael Nugent spoke on...

21 September 2015

The Association of Catholic Priests Supports Anti-Scientific Creationist Teaching in Catholic Schools

The Association of Catholic Priests Supports Anti-Scientific Creationist Teaching in Catholic Schools. While the Roman Catholic Church is broadly supportive of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, their formal doctrine continues to insist on “human exceptionalism”. That is, the Church requires that some dogmatic...

4 September 2015

Are the Schools Equality PACT reforms, to protect human rights, unconstitutional?

Are proposed reforms to end religious discrimination in Irish schools unconstitutional? This document should be read alongside the Schools Equality PACT, which asks the Irish Parliament to urgently pass a comprehensive Schools Equality Bill to reform the current State-funded religious discrimination. The PACT (Patronage, Access,...