Atheist Ireland has made the following submission to to The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission on the Draft Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty. 4. The purpose of the draft code is to reflect the relevant law and...
Atheist Ireland met Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman last week. Afterwards, we wrote the following to the Minister about the right to freedom of ‘religion or belief’. Dear Minister O’Gorman, we discussed at our meeting what test should be used to determine what...
Atheist Ireland met Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman last week. Afterwards, we wrote the following to the Minister about the right to objective sex education. Dear Minister O’Gorman, the right to objective sex education is infringed by allowing Catholic schools to deliver the...
Atheist Ireland, along with our colleagues from the Evangelical Alliance and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, met Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman this week. It was a very constructive meeting at which we discussed: The concept of freedom of religion or belief in human...
Atheist Ireland met this week with Lt Col Padraig Brennan, chair of the Irish Defence Forces Review of the Chaplaincy service. Here are our thoughts and recommendations that we expressed at the meeting. The Defence Forces website states that “The Defence Forces are committed to...
Many people are aware that the Irish Constitution requires the President and judges to swear a religious oath. Many people are unaware that this also applies to the Council of State, which includes the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Chief Justice, the President of Court of...
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 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...
Since December 2021, Atheist Ireland has been lobbying to vindicate the constitutional right to not attend religious instruction in schools, and to uphold parental authority in the education of their children, which the Supreme Court has described as a foundational pillar of the Constitution. As...