Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not know how much evidence we need of the requirement for us to separate church and State completely, but we have had plenty of it in recent days. To my mind in 21st century Ireland it is just not acceptable to continue any form of religious discrimination in admission to schools or to continue a religious bias, which is imposed on children in a school of a particular ethos on children who do not share that faith or ethos.

I submitted these amendments which allow for that discrimination and the continuation of essentially imposing a religious ethos on people who do not share it in our schools before the astounding result we had in the referendum at the weekend. If evidence and support was required for the idea that people in this country want a different type of society, we certainly got it at the weekend when it comes to church diktat imposing on the lives, choices and rights of citizens. Most obviously it was around the question of a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy but everybody knows it was about much more than that. The exit poll carried out by RTÉ was clear. There was and still is a lot of debate about what it all meant but the exit poll clarified some of that. A total of 62% of people who voted said for them the vote was about "the right to choice". That is what people want, namely, the right to choose and to make their own decisions. It was also about equality. It was obvious from the preponderance of women in the campaign and its mobilisation that it was about a demand for equality, that they are not putting up with this anymore. That was the feeling. We all know it. We saw a tidal wave of that sentiment demanding a change.

That has obvious implications in terms of the legislation and all that has been discussed today but to my mind it is obvious that it has implications for the relationship between church and State, especially in the area of education and in the area of health, which we should discuss on another day given the unbelievable situation where a religious order will control the national maternity hospital. However, we will deal with that on another day. To my mind it is just not tenable anymore that in the aftermath of that vote we are not going to move to separate church and State completely in the education of young people. Before getting into the detail, I refer to the point made by Deputy Clare Daly. One of the schools she mentioned was in Booterstown. I got calls about it. People complained that when they walked into a national school to vote on the referendum they were confronted with Bibles and statues of the Virgin Mary. They complained about them but they could not get them removed.

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Frankly, they were intimidated by them when they were voted. Thankfully, the vast majority were not so intimidated that they did not vote "Yes", but nonetheless they did genuinely feel that way. Obviously, I did not know at the time that it was more widespread than that, but Deputy Clare Daly has confirmed that it was widespread throughout the country. That is because we still allow Catholic domination of schools. It even impacted on voting during the referendum. I might mention in passing the statement made today by the Minister, Deputy Katherine Zappone, about the Sisters of Charity and St. Patrick’s Guild.

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