David Norris (Independent)

Yes, for education. I would like to refer to the review by the UN Human Rights Committee which looked at this situation and said the integrated curriculum, or ethos, is discrimination: "The committee notes with concern that the vast majority of Ireland's primary schools are privately run denominational schools that have adopted a religious integrated curriculum thus depriving many parents and children who so wish to have access to secular primary education." I have read a long, scholarly legal article about how difficult it is to amend this situation without some kind of constitutional review.

I want to retain my little denomination, and the Roman Catholic Church and Jewish and Islamic religions. It really glorifies life that we have this richness and diversity. Therefore, I am not against denominational education. However, artificially propping up these things through schools, where sometimes the teachers do not believe in anything, disillusions the children. Let them go to church if their parents want them to have religious education and let the churches give it to them. Let the schools off the hook. We have preached this attitude for years to the people of Northern Ireland, where we said separate or segregated education was part of the problem. Why do we not address it here?

I have had correspondence from parents who are secular. I think they are atheists, but I am not certain of that. Those parents want a particular kind of education for their children but cannot get it. They are being forced to send their children to religious schools. They were horrified at Christmas when the children came home, after the parents had been promised by the school they would not receive religious education, singing Christmas carols. While I would not lose much sleep over that, it was deemed offensive by those parents. They found it impossible to get any context which was not religious. This is something we need to look at.

In this context, I want the Minister to take back one message to his colleagues in Cabinet. I want them to look at the situation involving the Ferns and Cloyne reports and ask themselves who are the worst equipped people to be given absolute responsibility over children. There was a systematic structural concealment of considerable levels of severe sexual child abuse and molestation, yet because of the way in which the equality legislation was drafted, all the churches — not singling out the Roman Catholic church — have an exemption from the operation of that legislation. This allows them, theoretically — I do not think they have done it yet or would have the gall to do it — to dismiss a teacher because of his or her sexual orientation, regardless of character. These are the people whose authority has been impugned because of their known, stated, recorded behaviour as in these reports. Despite this, their track record and the number of convictions, these people could say to somebody like me, "You are not fit to be a teacher."

This was said in my regard, to the Provost, in a letter from a parent approximately 30 years ago. I was giving a series of lectures on European comic fiction in the English tradition. I explained to the class of final year students — grown up people — that it was impossible to understand the way in which the novelist E. M. Forster dealt with character, plot, situation etc. unless one understood his ambiguous attitude towards his own sexuality. A parent wrote to the Provost saying I should be dismissed, not because I was a lousy teacher, but because I was a good teacher and might have an impact as a role model. I would hope so, because there was none for me. I was not changed by my teacher role models. As far as I know, my teachers were all heterosexual, but it did not rub off on me.

I urge the Minister to take this issue to Cabinet. He should ask Cabinet, in light of the objective evidence — not just the evidence of an old ranter like me — whether it is any longer appropriate that the church, which has shown such abandonment of its responsibility to children, should be allowed to be the only institution in the State that is not covered by equality legislation. I urge him to put this question to the Cabinet. Say, "That old nut-case, Norris, in the Seanad, was on about this" and ask it to look at the evidence.