Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This Bill is about equality. If we cannot remedy something as blatant as the inequality of discriminating against four and five year olds, I do not know what we are doing here, to be perfectly honest. I will take the same line as Deputy O'Brien and will not go into detail. A lot has been said already. This Government came in with a great promise. It could have done anything because of the huge majority it had. The Labour Party is not a minor part of this Government - it has 36 or 37 seats, if I remember correctly. One would have expected a significant amount of progress to have been made on something like this. It makes people dishonest when we need honesty in our society as a value in its own right. People are going off and having their children baptised when it is not their choice. There is pretence in order to get their child into school. I am not anti-Catholic and I am not religious. There is something very offensive about a four year old being refused on the basis that they are not baptised when the school is a publicly funded building and its teachers are paid by the State. In this day and age, that is not acceptable. This is an opportunity to do something about it.

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