Ms Edel Quinn:

I thank the Chairman and the members of the committee for inviting us to address today's meeting. We commend Senators on their engagement with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and thank them for consulting us in this way. I am here to represent the Children's Rights Alliance, which unites almost 100 organisations that are working to improve the lives of children by ensuring their rights are protected in Irish law, policy and practice. I intend to share my time with Mr. Paul Rowe, who is the chief executive of Educate Together, which is one of the alliance's member organisations. In our submission to this committee, we raised a number of issues relating to children that are of relevance to various provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the issue of children in detention, which was discussed this morning.

We have been asked to focus our presentation on the issues of school admissions, patronage and pluralism. The work of the alliance would usually lead me to discuss these issues in the context of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but today I will explore them in the context of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I will briefly explain what the human rights framework on this issue under the covenant says about religion and education. The covenant obliges states to protect against discrimination on a number of grounds, including a person's beliefs, under Articles 2 and 26. It goes on to specifically protect children against discrimination under Article 24. It provides under Article 18 that everyone has an absolute "right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion". The UN Human Rights Committee has interpreted this right as also including the right not to have a religion. Paragraph 4 of Article 18 provides that states must "have respect for the liberty of parents and .... guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions".

The UN committee also provides guidance on how religious instruction can be delivered. It is noted that public education that includes religious instruction must make provision for non-discriminatory exemptions or alternatives that would accommodate the wishes of parents and guardians. What has the committee said about Ireland, specifically, in this area? As Professor O'Flaherty noted this morning, the committee suggested in its last review - in 2008 - that this should be a priority issue for Ireland and for the committee. The committee suggested that because the vast majority of Ireland's primary schools are privately run and denominational, issues arise under Articles 2, 18, 24 and 26 for families that want their children to pursue a secular education. The committee recommended that Ireland should increase its efforts to ensure non-denominational primary education is widely available in all parts of the country. It is worth mentioning that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child made similar recommendations in 2006, as did the UN Committee against Racial Discrimination in 2011. The State accepted recommendations on this issue under the UN universal periodic review mechanism in 2012. It is also on the list of issues for the committee's upcoming review session.

I wish to respond to the committee's question about the Children’s Rights Alliance's remaining concerns in this area. Parents and families of the majority religion in Ireland are well served by the school system. The available denominational schools enable them to vindicate their right to have their children educated in conformity with their own convictions. While this is to be commended, issues arise for children of minority or no faiths, whose families want them to be educated in a multidenominational or non-denominational environments. This is a particular problem for families in many parts of the country where parents have little or no choice regarding where to send their children. When this issue was last before the UN Human Rights Committee in 2008, well over 90% of primary schools were privately-run religious institutions in receipt of State funding. Today, six years later, the situation has changed very little. This does not reflect the dramatic demographic changes in the composition of Irish society, including in the area of religion, as identified in the censuses of 2006 and 2011. This further emphasises the urgent need for the State to accommodate the rights of these families to education in conformity with their own convictions.

The Children's Rights Alliance's annual report card series tracks the progress being made with the Government’s commitments to children. I hope all members have received a copy of our most recent report card, which relates to 2014. In that document, we praised the positive developments in this area, including the engagement of the Minister for Education and Skills and his Department, the work of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector and the completion of parental surveys to establish demand for change in existing patronage. However, implementation of the divestment process has been slow. It will be some time before a significant real-life impact will be felt by children and their families on the ground. While we fully acknowledge the complexity of divestment for the institutions involved, we feel that the mechanisms being used to roll out divestment should be re-examined to identify the cause of the delay and to re-ignite the momentum to make progress with the process.

It is only when the impact of divestment yields tangible results for families and children of minority religions or none that the rights of families and children can be said to be met and that the State can then be said to have discharged its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ICCPR.