Ms Jane Donnelly:

I am from Atheist Ireland but today I shall represent Atheist Ireland, Evangelical Alliance Ireland and the Ahmadiyya Muslims. This is the first time an Oireachtas committee has been jointly addressed on behalf of atheists, evangelical Christians and Ahmadiyya Muslims. We are the only group here today that represents belief groups protected under the right to freedom of religion or belief who are discriminated against. This is a human rights issue, not one of balancing different parental choices. It is a scandal this matter has not been resolved despite ten different UN and Council of Europe human rights conclusions that the State is breaching our human rights. The Government also has a legal duty under Article 42 of the Constitution to respect equally the rights of all parents, not just those of selected religions. After I last addressed this committee, it had already identified the problem. The committee concluded in 2014 that "multiple patronage and ethos as a basis for policy can lead to segregation and inequality and that the objectives of admission policy should be equality and integration". It follows from the committee's conclusion that the patronage system needs to be replaced, not made even more segregated by even more private patrons. I ask the committee please to reinforce that important conclusion and not to retreat from it.

The Government has ignored the committee's conclusion and cited an unpublished and scandalous legal opinion that it is constitutionally obliged to buttress religious discrimination. The State has not balanced competing rights. It has simply ignored our guaranteed right to equal access to a local school and, far more important, to have the State curriculum delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner. Instead, the State cedes control of publicly funded schools to private patrons, most of whom integrate a Catholic ethos throughout the State curriculum. Children cannot opt out of a religious ethos. As the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights said last month, the private patrons hold the State hostage. This breaches the State's positive duty to respect the human right of all parents to ensure the teaching of their children is in conformity with their convictions. This is an absolute right that should not be balanced against the rights of others or be gradually achieved. We continue to seek a secular school system. We also support the immediate recommendations of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission that no child should be given preferential access to a publicly funded school on the basis of their religion and that the State curriculum should be delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner.