Atheist Ireland has obtained, under the Freedom of Information Act, notes of a meeting between the Department of Education and representatives of the Catholic Church in 2018. At that meeting, the Department told the Catholic Church that ETB schools must respect the constitutional rights of parents for their children to ...
The recently published Document from Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI's Patrons' Framework on ethos, states that ETB schools are multi-denominational. This includes the Non-Designated Community Colleges and Designated Community Colleges. Specifically, the Ethos Framework states that: "ETB schools are state, co-educational, multi-denominational" As always the ETBs are not clear or transparent ...
Back to school and back to €10 million for Chaplains. Mostly Catholic and some Church of Ireland chaplains cost the state approx €10 million per year. Chaplains are paid to help mainly Catholic parents with the religious education and religious formation of their children outside of the religious instruction class ...
If the Catholic Church divests a school to a Community National School, it is divesting from one type of religious school (a denominational school) to a different type of religious school (a multi-denominational school.) Atheism, humanism, and secularism are not denominations. The term denominational is a religious designation. Multi-denominational means ...
In the recent Burke case, the Court of Appeal stated that: “179. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Campaign to Separate Church and State v. Minister for Education is binding authority..” For years church and state have used the judgement in the Campaign case to force religion on ...
Atheist Ireland, the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Ireland have jointly written to the Minister for Education about religious discrimination in the hiring of Chaplains in ETB schools. The WRC found in a recent case that a Designated ETB Community College could not rely on Section 7 ...
The Irish State continues to help the Catholic Church to evangelise schoolchildren. In our education system, Church and State policy is to develop values to enable children to come to an understanding of the relevance of religion to their lives. Children are taught to respect religious beliefs and their codes ...
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has found that a child from Catholic family was discriminated against on the grounds of religion because an Education & Training Board (ETB) school gave preference in admissions to children from Church of Ireland families. Discrimination hurts, and the child was distraught at being refused ...
Atheist Ireland sent our recent Legal Opinion on the Constitutional Right to not attend religious instruction under Article 44.2.4 to the General Secretary of the ETBI Paddy Lavelle. The ETBI responded to us on behalf of all ETBs and claimed that the ETBI distinguishes between religious instruction and religious education. ...
In an article in the Irish Times today the ETBs have again claimed that the right to not attend religious instruction under Article 44.2.4 of the Irish Constitution is confined to not attend religious instruction according to the rites of one religion. There is no legal basis for this opinion. ...
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