Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply, but he is not addressing the core issue. He is talking about endorsing a model that entails segregating children during the school day. How can that possibly be right? What he is suggesting is that education policy should put the interests of children second to the interest of any church. How can the Minister defend that situation? Just imagine that for a half an hour in every school day, children are segregated according to religion. That cannot possibly be right. At a very minimum, is the Minister prepared to insist that any denominational instruction is moved to the end of the school day so that we do not have this kind of divisive and anti-inclusive policy in operation in the community national schools?

The Minister has not addressed the other question about section 7 of the Equal Status Act, which will continue to allow thousands of schools to discriminate purely on the grounds of religion. Is the Minister prepared to give a commitment to repeal that section here in order to stop that kind of discrimination?

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