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

The primary function of the Oireachtas is to enact legislation. All the laws we debate and pass will be underpinned by a belief or value system. For some, that is a religious value system while for others, values such as equality, solidarity, democracy, honesty and accountability form a civil morality that is not necessarily drawn from a religious belief system. I believe we need to develop a civic responsibility and a civic morality, but to do that, we need to separate church from State.

I was reading a well-argued article written in 2011 by Dr. Garret FitzGerald in The Irish Times,the headline for which was "Ireland's lack of civic morality grounded in our history". In it he compares our history with that of other European countries. It is recommended reading and I wish to quote selectively from it. Following independence, FitzGerald argues:

[T]he Irish Catholic Church sought ... to bend the new State to its purpose, relying upon the strong personal faith of members of successive governments to secure its objectives. And it succeeded - up to a point. It secured censorship of books and films, and was successful in having contraception banned.

However, when in 1929 the Catholic hierarchy challenged the non-denominational provisions of our constitution by attempting to persuade the government to confine the appointment of dispensary doctors to Roman Catholics, it was outwitted by WT Cosgrave. He told the hierarchy that as guardian of a non-denominational constitution he could not implement their proposal and would have to resign from office if their proposal were to be pressed. The request was dropped.

[...] This underlying stand-off between church and State seems to have inhibited the Irish Catholic Church from advocating civic responsibility.

Instead much of its energy was concentrated on aspects of sexual morality – an area where it eventually lost credibility.

[...] The consequences of all this have been that a society with an educational system almost exclusively in the hands of the Catholic Church has been left with virtually no tradition of, or training in, civic morality or civic responsibility.

The baptism barrier and the ownership and control of the National Maternity Hospital, it could be argued, flow from a religious belief system and form part of the reason we need to separate church from State and take collective responsibility, underpinned by a well-developed civic morality. In many ways we not only outsourced service provision, which we are still doing, but we also outsourced our morality as a State.

The highest form of law in Ireland is our Constitution. No law can be enacted that is repugnant to our Constitution. It is inconsistent for us to commence each day with a prayer and I question whether it reflects the non-denominational nature of our Constitution. Religious faith is a personal thing and is hugely important to perhaps the majority of people in this country. Some people, like myself, are not believers but that does not mean there is an absence of morality or values. For those reasons, I cannot support the retention of the prayer.

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