‘Religion class should go,’ says human rights group

A HUMAN rights group is calling on the Government to end faith formation classes during the school day.

A petition by Education Equality calling for faith formation to take place outside school hours because it segregates children of different or no religion has gathered over 800 signatures in the last week.

Barrister and policy officer for the organisation Paddy Monaghan believes that because children are segregated from their classmates for a half hour each day, the State is failing to live up to guarantees of religious equality in the Constitution. ‘My little boy is three now and will soon be going to primary school. It breaks my heart to think that for half an hour of every day that he is there, he will be treated differently, segregated from his classmates and made to sit at the back of the class,’ he told the Irish Daily Mail.

‘I have no desire to stop faith formation, I simply think it should take place outside of school hours.’

Mr Monaghan points to Article 44.2.4 of the Constitution which makes it unlawful ‘to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school’.

‘At the moment the State is failing in that regard,’ Mr Monaghan said.

Education Equality ran a similar campaign in recent years around the ‘Baptism barrier’ – which allows Catholic schools the right to give preference of admission to Catholic children, despite the fact that 90% of all schools in Ireland are Catholic.

That petition led Education Minister Richard Bruton to commit to introducing ‘constitutionally robust proposals’ to end religious discrimination in schools. Mr Monaghan is hoping his new campaign can have a similar impact.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said: ‘Every child has a constitutional right to withdrawal from religious instruction. The department expects each primary school to facilitate this right.’