Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

These amendments, in particular amendments Nos. 30 and 31, get to the heart of a debate that will open up more and more in society in the coming years. We saw the incredible and tremendous scale of the victory at the weekend and it speaks to a desire of large sections of people for a very different society from the one we have had, with an end to the domination of the Catholic Church and the oppression of women. This is a struggle for equality and against oppression and a key part of that is the struggle for a secular society, where there is separation of church and State and where everybody's rights to practise religion are fully protected by the State, with no interference whatsoever. It is also, however, a society in which the State's resources are not used to promote any particular religion.

The key battlegrounds for a secular society are in education and healthcare, where the lack of a secular society has a daily impact on people's lives. Amendment No. 30 gets to the heart of the matter in respect of the education system. It is repugnant to me, as a secularist, that public funds and resources are used to promote different religions, in particular the Catholic Church which covers close to 95% of primary schools. I also happen to be an atheist but that does not inform my views in this case. We will not deal with this issue unless we enact something like what we are proposing in amendment No. 30, which is to remove all religious instruction and faith formation from school hours. That is because these are hours for which teaching staff are being paid by the public's taxes. It also proposes that "religious instruction and faith formation relating to or arising from the characteristic ethos of the school shall not...permeate education". These demands are quite basic and simple. They are asks but they are asks that have been implemented in other countries, such as in the US. The US is a religious society but there is separation of church and state.

That is what needs to be done if we are to have a secular society. We must have a separation of the two. We cannot have a promotion of religion in this way.

The points have been well made as to the impact of this on people. It is a pressure on children to participate in a particular religious education and, if they do not, the consequence is their potential social exclusion. It has negative consequences for children. Parents have the right that the children would hear about whatever religion they are a part of or advocate for, but they do not have the right to expect that the public would fund that through public schools and then put pressure on children, in effect, to experience that through religious education in school. For me, this is obvious and simple. We should not have religious education happening in our school system.

Clearly, the Government's approach is not to accept that. I presume the amendments will not pass because Fianna Fáil will go along with the Government, but I advise the Minister this issue is not going to go away. It has become clear that Fine Gael's approach to these issues of church-State relations is more skilful and a little more flexible than previous Governments. The Government has recognised which way the wind is blowing and has decided it is better to bend with that pressure rather than to face church-State relations being broken and the end of the State's reliance on, and outsourcing to, the church, but ultimately it will not work.

The movement of people who successfully repealed the eighth amendment will not just leave it there. They are turning their attention to all questions relating to education and health, and the Government's piecemeal approach to bend a little on the baptism barrier but not to deal with it fundamentally, to bend a very small amount on this issue before us but not to deal with it, and to bend a little on sex education by saying we will have a new curriculum but we will not deal with the religious ethos issue, which is at the core of why we cannot have objective sex education, will not be accepted. People will increasingly demand that each of these issues be dealt with but, more generally, they will say we need a separation of church and State in this country. We will have a major movement around that. It is quite clear that movement will ultimately be successful. The question is how long and how far the Government and various establishment parties will resist that rising demand and how much resistance they will put up.

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