Secularism

1 July 2023

Why publicly funded schools are ‘organs of the state’ under human rights law

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...

16 June 2023

What qualifies under the right to freedom of philosophical belief?

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...

16 June 2023

The right to objective sex education, not delivered through Catholic ethos

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...

9 June 2023

Atheist Ireland, Evangelicals, and Ahmadis meet Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman

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...

27 May 2023

Two levels of religious discrimination in solemnising marriages

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...

16 May 2023

Atheist Ireland meets with Defence Forces Chaplaincy Review Board

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...

11 May 2023

Marriage laws still discriminate for religions over humanists, and for humanists over atheists

In the marriage figures issued by the CSO the Humanist Association of Ireland solemnised 9.3% of all marriages in 2022. Since the introduction of the Civil Registration Amendment Act in 2012, the Humanist Association have been permitted to legally solemnise marriages. That has come at...

9 May 2023

The 62 Types of Wedding Ceremonies in Ireland in 2022

Atheist Ireland has obtained figures from the CSO showing the 62 types of wedding ceremonies in Ireland in 2022. They range from Roman Catholic to the Rites of Passage of the Indigenous Wisdom Tradition of Celtic Druid Temple. Only about 44% were some variation of...

6 May 2023

One in five Irish marriages now spiritualist

One in five Irish weddings last year were spiritualist ceremonies, according to information obtained by Atheist Ireland last week. This is twice the number you would think from the published CSO statistics, which hide half of the spiritualist marriages under the label ‘other religious’. This...

29 April 2023

Catholic weddings return to steady decline

The number of Catholic weddings has recovered from its dramatic drop during Covid, and has returned to the pattern of steady decline that has been happening for the past decade. In the decade since 2012, the percentage of Catholic weddings has dropped from 65.2% to...