Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I am not a member of this committee. I am substituting today for Deputy Burton because I have an interest in this area. I believe that the education system perpetuates inequality. In a system that is based on competition, as ours is, one will find in any community or geographical area a school that is the least popular and in that school one will generally find a disproportionate number of migrant children, Traveller children, children with special needs and children expelled from other schools and so on in order that other schools do not have to facilitate them. We stand over this because we want to have within the system what is known as parental choice, which if one talks to anybody from the Nordic countries, particularly Finland, is a strange priority. It is bizarre that we still separate children on the basis of religion and gender at the age of 4 years, as has been well articulated here.

My question for the witnesses relates to the constitutional issue often thrown at me during my time in government, in particular in the context of an amendment to section 37 of the Employment Equality Act. It is bizarre that it is still legal for a school to discriminate against a gay teacher or a teacher who is an unmarried parent. We were only able to amend that provision rather than delete it or have it removed from the Statute Book because it is a constitutional provision. A number of speakers have spoken about the constitutional provision and have offered their interpretations in this regard. The Department refers to this provision in the context of the baptism bar. I would welcome the views of the witnesses on that issue.

In regard to the Irish language question, Deputy Burton and I have tabled an amendment to ensure a situation does not arise whereby an Irish-speaking family would not be able to access their local Gaelscoil and would be forced to have their child educated through English. As Irish is the first language of this State, that is a reasonable provision to have in the Bill. Generally speaking, I believe our system is radically unfair and unequal and that, in terms of this Bill, all we are doing is tinkering with the system. That we are providing by way of this Bill that people, because of their royal blood lineage, should be allowed to send their sons or daughters to the schools they attended is bizarre. I do not understand how any school body with a sense of equality in their ethos could stand over that bonkers provision. It goes against everything I feel is right and just in life.

I recall visiting a particular part of the country, which I will not name, and the local representative showing me with great pride a newly built Educate Together school, a newly built Catholic school and a newly built Church of Ireland school, which means that, in terms of education, children from that area are spread across three different schools. Is this the ideal? Is it what we want for the children of this country? I am a great supporter of the Educate Together model. There is an Educate Together school in my constituency, which I welcome. I worked very hard to help bring it to fruition. The Educate Together model is needed because the overall system demands it because it is broken, in my view. I accept that point is more of a rant than a constructive one. The joke about the Department of Education and Skills, which is probably unfair, about how many Department of Education officials it takes to change a light bulb comes to mind, the joke being around the Department's lack of ability to change. In terms of the constitutional issue, how would the witnesses convince the Department officials to change their view or that of the Minister on that question?