Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to look at this from the perspective of multidenominational schools. That is a very valid conversation for another day. However, teachers should be hired on their skills, their ability, their experience and their qualifications to actually impart learning to the students in their classrooms. As there is a constitutional right for a learner to opt out of religion, why is this restriction still being placed on some teachers to be able to deliver that? The cold hard fact is that the 2022 census found that Roman Catholics accounted for 69% of the population. That represented a drop from 84.2% in 2011. Regardless of the factors that influence the latter, my opinion is that people who are not identifying as any religion at all play a large part in that. If we truly want our teachers to reflect the children who are sitting in their classrooms, we need to look at this. The saying that "You can't be what you can't see" applies to more than just what is visually obvious.

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