Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister spoke earlier about the need to be fair to children, parents, minority faiths and everybody. From what I can gather, and I had some experience of this as a parent, it is not easy in some instances if one is not a Roman Catholic to be able to have one's child educated in a way that will suit one. This Bill is only about fairness and the elimination of discrimination and I thank Solidarity-PBP for bringing it forward and giving us the opportunity to have the debate because there seems to be a significant amount of agreement among us. We all agree that discrimination is wrong but it happens on a daily basis, and it is facilitated by this Government. It will happen to children next September. The only fair way to do this is to allow parents who wish their children to be involved in faith formation, ceremonies and all that goes along with that to be facilitated to do that in their own time, outside of what we can all agree are the core activities school, not rugby but a lot of learning.

In 2011, the UN Universal Periodic Review recommended that Ireland eliminate discrimination in schools on religious grounds. It is a mystery to me why that has not been done, yet in this debate this evening we are all saying that there should be no discrimination in our schools. It is not an urban-rural issue; it happens throughout the country. If we are all agreed that there should be no discrimination in our schools, should we not do the decent thing and support legislation which seeks to eliminate discrimination in all of its forms from our schools and allow our children get on with the business of going to school to learn and to grow and allow those people who so choose to engage in faith formation and all that goes along with that outside core school hours?

There needs to be a change to ensure that religious instruction and faith formation classes take place outside core hours. It would allow an opportunity, as it does in multidenominational schools, for children to learn about all religions. That is probably a very good idea but without doing so within a faith formation setting.

I had personal experience of this because my daughter was educated in a multidenominational school. While there was a certain amount of discussion around religion, it was about all religions, and no child in that classroom felt left out. No child sat in the classroom while the other children engaged in an activity that was not part of their life or their family, and no child was discriminated against. If there is broad agreement that there should be no discrimination in our school system, there should be broad agreement in support of this legislation.

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