We know the State discriminates against non-Christians – which makes a nonsense of constitutional caveats, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
I WROTE here a while ago about the extraordinary reality that anyone who is not, or does not pretend to be, a Christian, cannot study at any teacher training college in this so-called republic. Subsequently, Labour TD Seán Sherlock asked Minister of State at the Department of Education Conor Lenihan to state in the Dáil “the provision that is made in each of the colleges of education for students who object on grounds of religious belief or non-belief or other grounds of conscience to participating in faith formation”. He also asked whether “there is any recognised and viable education and career path open” to such people.
Lenihan’s answer was that “The bachelor of education courses provided by the colleges of education include compulsory modules on religious education . . . There is no separate qualification for primary teaching available in the State which does not include religious education . . . My department asked the colleges of education whether a student has ever objected on grounds of religious belief or non-belief or other grounds of conscience to participating in faith formation . . . The responses received from the colleges so far have indicated that this has not arisen to date.”
We thus have confirmation of two things. One is that anyone wishing to enter a particular branch of public employment – primary school teaching – must be willing both to study Christianity and to take part in the “faith formation” of children. The prospective teacher must proselytise for a religion he or she does not believe in. And secondly, the State’s position is that this is simply not a problem. Because such prospective teachers keep their heads down, there is effectively no issue, and the Government has no intention of doing anything about it.
In itself, this is a grotesque situation, and one that is surely as offensive to believing Christians as to those of minority faiths or none. (Why would anyone who actually believes in a religion want it to be taught by a hypocrite?) But it also tells us a great deal about the decrepit state of our constitutional system.
Article 44 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and religion to every citizen. (Brian Walsh in the Supreme Court spelled out what this means: “No person shall directly or indirectly be coerced or compelled to act contrary to his conscience insofar as the practice of religion is concerned . . . Correlatively, he is free to have no religious beliefs or to abstain from the practice or profession of any religion.”)
Article 44 also states that “the State guarantees not to endow any religion” and “shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status”. Both of these provisions are being flouted by the State. All of the colleges of education that discriminate against non-Christians are State-funded. And a disability is clearly being imposed on those non-Christians – they cannot become teachers without agreeing to preach Christianity.
What is the Attorney General doing about this contempt for the Constitution? We know from previous cases – most notoriously, the X case – that the AG has not merely the right but the duty to act independently of government, and to uphold the Constitution. In answering questions from Seán Sherlock and Ruairí Quinn, Conor Lenihan promised to “refer the matter to the Attorney General”. Even if the AG were previously unaware of such discriminatory State practices, he is surely conscious of them now.
In all this, keeping one’s head down – as non-Christian trainee teachers are expected to do – is the preferred option.
Earlier this month, for example, the Human Rights Commission replied to a woman who asked it to inquire into religious discrimination against her children by her local community school. The HRC acknowledged that the complaint raised “a number of issues under human rights conventions and indeed under the Constitution”. It nevertheless declined to pursue the matter on the grounds that an inquiry would not be “necessary or expedient”. The best it could promise was that it would “revisit the matter on a policy basis”.
Unless the AG decides to act, this whole issue will continue to be yet another of Ireland’s “unknown knowns” – one of those things we know about but choose to be ignorant of. We know the State is discriminating against non-Christians. We know this makes a nonsense of important provisions of the Constitution. We know that the European Court of Human Rights has already found that compulsory religious proselytism in State schools is unlawful. But we will ignore all of this until we start to get religious-based conflict, as fanatics feed off justified grievances. Maybe it’s a pity that we’ve never had that kind of conflict on this island before. We might have learned something.