Please send this letter to tell your politicians to end religious discrimination in Irish schools

Atheist Ireland is in a dialogue process with the Minister for Education as well as the Taoiseach about religious discrimination in Irish schools. If you want to help this process, we have prepared the following letter that you can use as a basis for your own letter to your local TDs, Ministers, Senators, Euro MPs and others.

The religious discrimination in Irish schools is contrary to the European Convention and International Human Rights treaties that Ireland has signed up to, yet it remains entrenched in admissions policies, rules for schools, curriculum guidelines, even equality and employment legislation, and politicians keep finding reasons to avoid addressing the issue.

• You can find the contact details for your local politicians at
  http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/tdssenators/
• Please let Atheist Ireland know of your responses and experiences.
  (info@atheist.ie or education@atheist.ie)

Here’s the sample letter. We suggest that you use it as the basis of your own personal letter, and include any personal examples that you have experienced of religious discrimination in Irish schools.

Sample letter:

Re: Remove religious discrimination in access to publicly funded schools.

Dear

Please give your support to removing religious discrimination in access to publicly funded schools. As it stands now Section 7 – 3 (c) of the Equal Status Act permits publicly funded National Schools to give preference to co-religionists and to refuse access to a child in order to uphold their religious ethos. Please remove this Section of the Equal Status Act so that all children in Ireland are treated equally and with respect.

The proposed new Draft General Scheme of an (Admissions to schools Bill) 2013 will not remove religious discrimination in access to publicly funded National Schools and many children will continue to suffer religious discrimination in access to education. Religious discrimination in access to education undermines the dignity of the child and breaches Ireland’s international obligations. It is a breach of the European Convention and the United Nations has asked Ireland on more than one occasion to remove this religious discrimination.

You would not countenance a situation where a child was refused access to a publicly funded hospital on the grounds of their parents’ religion, so why is it in order to refuse a child access to their only local publicly funded National school because their parents have no religion or are from a minority religion.

I/we ask that you treat all the children of Ireland equally and protect their human rights by removing religious discrimination in our education system.

Yours faithfully,

Or you can download the letter here
letter to politicians re religious discrimination