Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The Senator is correct. The Constitution has supremacy in relation to the particular Bill and, upon enactment, over this legislation and there is no question about that. A wider question could conceivably arise where the court in Strasbourg decided that a provision of the Constitution itself was in contravention of the European Convention and that would be a horrible vista for any Irish Parliament to contemplate. Happily, it has not happened yet. There is a substantial degree of convergence between the rights conferred by Articles 40 to 44 of the Constitution of Ireland and the rights recognised in the convention.

On the question of the schools, the Senator will be aware of the position of the universities which now rests on statute, but that one particular university, the University of Dublin, which the Senator represents here in the Oireachtas, took umbrage at the course adopted and decided that to preserve its essentially private character, it would promote a Private Bill through these Houses to regularise its position in relation to that legislation. That is a very practical illustration of the difficulty the courts will be confronted with in determining whether an act is essentially public or private in character.

Likewise regarding the first and second level schools, not all of them are established by law – far from it – but they have been recognised by law for many years. The recognition in the Education Act 1998 is more comprehensive than any previous recognition, although that Act still has written into it another biblical maxim which the Senator did not refer to: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's".