Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is also outrageous that we do not hear from the only independent voice that I have heard, Senator Sean Barrett. I will not take any advice from those who are about to feather their own nest inside on the board of Aer Lingus, getting a huge payout once this deal is done, and other people who have conflicts of interest. I know the Leader is a decent man and I ask him to change the Order of Business.

I wish to raise today Article 44.2.2° of the Constitution, which guarantees that the State will not endow any specific religion. It has come as something of a shock to me to find out that, quite to the contrary, the State is endowing a religion through the chaplaincies that are appointed in institutes of technology all over this country. There are a number of serious issues involved. Salaries of €30,000 to €50,000 a year are being paid to chaplains but there is no selection process or application process and there are no criteria under which these chaplains are appointed, yet Trinity College pays its chaplains out of its own coffers. There is something seriously wrong in a country that, on the one hand, says it will not endow a religion and, on the other, appoints a specific set of religious preachers to third level education institutes, when the people who attend those institutes are all adults capable of making up their own minds as to what religion they want to follow. I ask the Leader to organise a debate which would include the issue of chaplaincy in schools and hospitals throughout the country and who pays for them.