Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is an important subject and it is not straightforward. I very much welcome the dialogue promised by the Taoiseach but I am not sure what the new covenant means. It sounds good but I do not know what will come out of it. It is an ambition worth exploring. Most of us who have been in the House a long time will recall the two previous referenda on divorce. If we contrast those with the ongoing referendum on the same matter, we will see how transformed society is but it has been transformed in a complicated way. The latest census revealed that nearly one in ten people registered in Ireland has no religion and that an increasingly large number have a variety of faiths, who all have to be accommodated.

As I have, the Taoiseach has talked to senior Catholic Church figures about divestment and these are important matters. We do not want to build a set of parallel education establishments to create individual silos, which has happened in other countries as they became multicultural. We have siloed populations and that causes a difficulty into the future so we have to give some care and some thought to how we are going to structure the new shape of education in Ireland. People need to have a legitimate choice over whether to have a faith-based education but this should not be done in a way that is separated out from different faiths. The consequences of doing so can be seen in Northern Ireland, where the separation of faith schools has made a contribution to the separation of society. We have to think carefully about the future and I would be interested in a structured dialogue in this House first, so that we can share views and see how we can move forward in building a new education system and a new health provision system that are not replicas of what exists.

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