Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There has long been a convention that politicians, particularly Cabinet Ministers, do not comment on ongoing litigation in any shape or form. I was, therefore, disappointed to hear the Tánaiste wade in, during his recent visit to the United States, with a diagnosis in respect of the situation of a family, one of the members of which is involved in a long-running dispute with the school that employs him. I am, of course, referring to Enoch Burke and the Burke family. It seems to me that what the Tánaiste was doing was engaging in stereotyping. I have had occasion in the past to teach students about stereotyping. It is when one takes a characteristic of a person, disagreeable or otherwise, and links that to the group of which that person is a member. We all know how wrong that is in the context of racism and discussion and discourse around members of the Travelling community. It seems to me that members of the home-schooling community were right to be aggrieved at the fact that the Tánaiste sought to link the unattractive style of advocacy that we might associate with the Burke family with the fact they were home-schooled. That is stereotyping of the worst kind. It lacks professionalism. I commend my colleague, Senator Pauline O'Reilly, and, indeed, spokespeople for home-schoolers on calling out the Tánaiste for speaking in that way.

I am not a fan of the approach of the Burke family to making their point. In fact, they have managed to make a bad fist of what was originally a very good case. However, I certainly do not think it fair to identify one aspect of their lives, that is, the home-schooling dimension, and use it to have a slap at home-schooling. There is a constitutional right in this country for parents to home-school their children. Parents are the primary educators. This is what this really is all about. There seems to be an approach by Government these days to put an asterisk over certain constitutional rights-----