Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Children are sensitive and vulnerable. Making them feel different by pulling them out of a class is tantamount to abuse. There is no other way to put it. If a child is taken out and treated differently from the rest, separated from his or her peers and put wherever else, without guidelines being provided as to how that should be done, it is a form of abuse. Without guidelines, it is left open to being even worse. I hope and believe most of the staff and principals in schools are very decent and compassionate to all children. If we are honest, however, when a particular ethos is at play and prioritised and this behaviour is considered acceptable, it can be the case that the child who does not fit in is looked down on, frowned upon or seen as lesser. The system is open to that potential possibility which no doubt has manifested itself in children who have opted out being singled out. Whatever way one cuts it, I cannot see how it is not totally unfair to sensitive, vulnerable young children and how it will not have a significant effect on them. Anyone who has children knows how sensitive they are. They ask questions about obvious contradictions and conflicts in the treatment of one person or thing against another. It hits children really hard in how they look at and feel about the world and their place in it. It is just wrong. I again note, to quote from the survey of these matters commissioned by EQUATE, that 71% of parents agree that we should introduce a subject in school on all religions and ethical systems, while 18% neither agree nor disagree and only 12% disagree. Only 12% believe we should hold on to the idea that a particular ethos should prevail and that, as a consequence, those who do not subscribe to it should be separated. Most see the sense in it. We know that a majority in the country have some religious views.

People with religious views understand that this has to change. Any fair and reasonable person would say that is the case. Let us not be behind the curve of where people in Irish society are at now and the intelligence and sensitivity they are displaying, instead of upholding what is the fundamentally and unfair and potentially abusive treatment of children who are the minority and are stigmatised, isolated and separated in this way.