Joe O'Toole (Independent)

It is worth noting the point made by Senator Brian Hayes but it is also worth noting that both Houses of the Oireachtas legislated in recent times to make it legal to discriminate on the grounds of religion in every primary school and institute of education. We should not stop at the scouts. We are now paying the price of the so-called equal status legislation which has introduced discrimination, legislation which we on these benches opposed all the way but which is now being applied to the scouts too. There is no question but that discrimination, apartheid, is endemic. The leaders of two churches in this country argued with me that I was unfair in my comments about them when I objected to this legislation. This is what is happening now. Senator Brian Hayes is absolutely correct, but nobody cares that for the past 100 years a non-believer could not become a boy scout or a girl guide. That is the other side of it, which nobody cares much about. That is the way it has been structured.