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....
Atheist Ireland has sent the following Petition to the Oireachtas Committee on Public Petitions and the Ombudsmen Petition : The Houses of the Oireachtas to guarantee and give practical application to the constitutional right to attend any school in receipt of public funding and not...
The CSO figures report that there were 3,350 Spiritualists in the country in 2022. That is, 3,350 people ticked the ‘other religion, if any’ box and wrote in ‘spiritualist’ as their religion. Yet the marriage figures from the Central Statistics Office show that in 2022...
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...
Five years to the day after the public voted to remove Blasphemy as a crime, from the Constitution in the 2018 referendum, detailed figures have emerged today from the CSO showing Ireland is becoming more and more pluralist with each census. Top level figures published...
In Ireland, religious discrimination in education has become part of our culture. That is because of the deference of successive governments to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has no issue with discriminating against minorities on the basis of religion in order to control the...
Atheist Ireland has asked to meet Heather Humphreys, Minister for Social Protection, to discuss the religious discrimination in the Civil Registration Act that governs who can legally solemnise marriages. Here is the letter we sent to her this week. Dear Minister Humphreys, We would like...