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

I will share time with Deputy Coppinger and we will each have five minutes.

Solidarity-People before Profit will be supporting this legislation and the plan to remove references to blasphemy from the Constitution.

It should be obvious why we must do it. It is a relic of an old Ireland that we need to leave behind because the special relationship - to use a phrase the Taoiseach used recently - between the Constitution, the political institutions of the State and a particular morality, that of the Catholic Church, has left a bitter legacy for huge numbers of people. For the sake of writers such as James Joyce whose literature was banned in the newly founded State because of this morality and these notions of blasphemy and, more seriously, the Magdalene women, those who suffered in mother and baby homes, the Tuam babies, children who were separated from their mothers, those who were the victims of forced adoptions, LGBT people generally who were persecuted by the State for so many years, single mothers who were stigmatised and vilified because they did not fit in with the morality of the church, for all of the victims of that draconian and supposed morality that was inflicted on so many and which caused so much suffering, it is critical that we leave all of that behind and take the morality of a particular religious view out of the Constitution and our laws and remove any special position it might have in the State and the political system in our society generally. It is long overdue that we would do this and we will support it wholeheartedly, but we must go further.

Reference was made to seven reports and the recommendations that we not only remove references to utterances of blasphemy but also to seditious or indecent matter. Perhaps the Minister might explain why the Government ignored these recommendations. One person's blasphemy is another's robust criticism of a viewpoint with which he or she does not agree. That is also true of sedition. One person's sedition is another's completely legitimate criticism of the institutions of the State, society or particular laws. With regard to indecent matter, the work of many of the best writers of this country was considered to be "indecent". Ulysseswas considered to be indecent and something that could not be read by certain people. Dr. Noel Browne's mother and child scheme was considered to be indecent, subversive and seditious according to the prevailing morality of the State. I do not know why this constitutional amendment does not also remove those references.

More broadly, I believe that simply changing words in the Constitution, while not giving real and tangible effect to the need to separate church and State more generally, potentially leaves us open to legitimate criticism of tokenism. Why does the Catholic Church continue to control schools and hospitals, to refuse to pay its debts under redress schemes, to have an influence over the curriculum taught in schools and to have influence over procedures carried out in hospitals? All of that is unacceptable. While this measure is to be supported, it is tokenism, unless we move to give full effect to the complete separation of church and State, particularly in the education and health sectors.

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