Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I was born in the United States of America and I went to school there for eight years. Every morning, we had to stand, face the flag, place our hands on our hearts, and sing "O say can you see". Children going to school in England at the time would have been taught in school that once upon a time, the sun never set on the British Empire, that Britain was the workshop of the world. Every ruling class needs an ideology to justify its rule. The gombeen men who passed themselves off as a ruling class and took over the control of the State in 1922 and 1923 in the midst of a counter-revolution leaned heavily on the Roman Catholic Church to provide it with an ideology to justify its rule. Control of the schools was handed over to the brothers and the nuns and leaving aside socialist or communist ideas among young people, even liberal or questioning ideas were beaten out of the heads of young people with the cane and the ruler. Times have passed and changed since then but the rulers of this society today - the likes of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - are slow to let go of that prop that has been so useful for them down through the years, to separate church and State and to end religious control and domination of the State-funded school system.

What is the word that has been used more than any other in the debate tonight? It is probably "in" or "the" or "or" but if one takes those little words out of it, the word is "ethos". Let us talk about ethos. In 1982, Ms Eileen Flynn was sacked from her job in the Holy Faith primary school in New Ross because she was pregnant and had started a family with a man who was married to someone else. The Employment Appeals Tribunal upheld the decision of the nuns and said that the sacking was in keeping with the Catholic ethos of the school. This ruling has never been overturned in a society the Minister of State described as a republic. That was 30 years ago. What happens in the schools today? We had a press conference yesterday to advertise and promote this Bill. We had a young school student who recounted her experience as a primary school student of asking the teacher "what about gay people?" The reply was "We won't talk about that." She went to secondary school. A Catholic group was invited into the school to give a talk about these issues. She asked "What about gay people?" She was referred to an outside organisation, BeLonGTo, and was told that it was not going to be discussed in the school. That is the reality of what ethos means. It is a scandal that in the year 2017, in a society that describes itself as a republic, we do not have appropriate sex education for our young people, boys and girls, in schools. We do not have sex education which caters for the LGBT community in schools that are funded by their parents, the taxpayers.

Is this solely and exclusively because of religious ethos? It is not. There are the failings of politicians, of the State, of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Is religious ethos a major factor in this? Absolutely, it is. The Government is failing tens of thousands of young people there. According to a recent survey, 8% of young people indicated that they were LGBT. That would represent tens of thousands of school students. Let us look at transgender young people. The Trans Youth Forum report of 2015 found that 32% of trans young people stated that the education institute they had attended did not respect their gender identity.

A mere 25% of them found that their gender had been acknowledged in school. Just 9% could participate in sport and 91% could not according to their chosen gender. It is an absolute disgrace, and that is apart from the problems that those young trans people face in terms of school trips, sports teams, uniforms, bathroom facilities in school, bullying and so on and so forth. That is down to ethos.

I quote the following experience of one parent:

As foreigners and parents of Irish children living in Ireland, we are the most affected with the educational system in Ireland which is based on catholic ethos and spirit, some of the Muslim students and their parents in our community, experienced difficulties in Catholic’s primary and secondary schools, some of the students were forced to attended mass in the churches and to participate in religion classes, which is contrary to their belief and conscience, consequently they felt discriminated against and that their right as human was violated. Some of them were expelled and some were asked to leave, many families and students from other faiths are suffering in silence.

That is from a submission from a Muslim parent to the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in recent years. It is an example of the situation in the major cities of this country. That is what the Minister stands over and describes as a republic. It is an absolute disgrace in reality.

The fact is the people are a million miles ahead of the Minister on these issues. Findings from a poll commissioned by Equate asked questions of members of the public. A total of 72% of respondents agreed that the law should be changed in order that baptism can no longer be a requirement for school admission to State-funded schools. They are a million miles ahead of the Government. Some 24% of people said that they personally would not have baptised their child if it was not needed to gain entry to the school. A total of 71% agreed that the time had come for church bodies to have less influence over our local schools. That is miles ahead of the Government.

The reality is this Bill, far from being incredibly far-reaching or radical, is actually very modest. It does not take the ownership of schools out of the hands of religious institutions. It merely applies some basic democratic conditions to the situation. It allows for a situation in which a board of management can state what it wants for a school and does not have to be bound by the ethos imposed upon it by the church organisation that runs the school. I do not see any reason parents who send their children to Gaelscoileanna would want to overthrow that ethos in those schools. That is a red herring. It is perhaps not quite as ridiculous as the points made about rugby-playing schools.

It is also a modest proposal in the sense that it allows for religious education and instruction within school buildings. The terrible atheists from the benches on this side of the House are proposing that school buildings might be allowed for religious education and instruction, but on two conditions: that it is not within the core hours of the school when it is funded by the taxpayer but organised after hours; and that the children who do not want to participate in it are not left twiddling their thumbs at the back of the class or, as Deputy Coppinger explained, left to play with the crayon they are given by the school authorities, but rather are provided with a real and genuine alternative in terms of what would be done with their time.

The big two capitalist parties in this House, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have a real problem on their hands now. The mood in society is changing. There is a new emerging majority. Women and young people are central to it and many progressive thinking men are part of it as well. They are coming to the position that we need to separate the church from the State in this country. On abortion, the Government is pointing in the opposite direction. On prayers in this House, the Government is pointing in the opposite direction. On the national maternity hospital, the Government is pointing in the opposite direction. In terms of how schools are run, the Government is pointing in the opposite direction. It is pointing in the wrong direction. There is an emerging majority that is looking for something very different. If the Minister is not prepared in a genuine and wholehearted way to cater for and satisfy that demand, he will be bypassed as well.

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