Comment: ‘Disconnect between our religious-run schools and a rapidly secularising society is becoming harder to ignore’

David Graham - Communications Officer / www.educationequality.ie

Schools are back and another generation of Irish five-year-olds are already learning to bless themselves, say their prayers, and mourn the crucifixion of Jesus.

Many parents do not consent to these lessons, and a recent INTO survey showed that only one in three primary teachers teaches religion willingly. With religious affiliation in decline, this reluctance is understandable. Yet for now, the status quo holds firm.

For all its emphasis on inclusion and diversity, the rollout of the Redeveloped Primary School Curriculum this term will do little for children from minority-faith and non-religious backgrounds. The disconnect between our religious-run schools and a rapidly secularising society is becoming harder to ignore.

The Catholic Church’s control of education remains almost as strong as ever, despite its declining role elsewhere in Irish public life. Its defenders see unfairness at every turn, even as the Church retains patronage of nearly 90 per cent of schools. The bishops resent losing the right to discriminate against unbaptised children following Education Equality’s successful campaign against the ‘baptism barrier’ a decade ago. Much easier to cry foul than to accept the need for reform.

“At times, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Catholic school is the reason for every current ill in the world of Irish education”, complained Bishop of Meath, Tom Deenihan, at St Oliver Plunkett’s Primary School in Navan last April.

The problem that eludes the bishop is that not every family wants to raise their children as Catholic. This should not come as a shock. We are a modern, pluralistic republic that has long embraced the basic principle of equality. Bishop Deenihan himself acknowledged of St Oliver’s that: “There are 15 different denominations attending the school here”. To which non-religious families might respond: “And what about us?”

The consistent failure of much of the education establishment to acknowledge a growing cohort of Irish society that has no religious faith is not a trivial oversight. It may not be an oversight at all, in fact, but rather a pointed effort to exclude a group of people whose very existence is an inconvenience.

Catholicism has declined as a percentage of Ireland’s population in every census since the 1960s. 26% of young adults aged 25-29 identified as having no religion in 2022. Just 53% of that cohort identified as Catholic. Over 40% of Irish marriages were celebrated in non-religious ceremonies in 2025, while less than 30% were Catholic.

These figures should be irrelevant to a discussion of education, or indeed any public service. The freedom of religion and belief that we enjoy in every other aspect of our lives – whether at a job interview, getting married, starting a family, or when we die – is lost at the school gate. And the failure of successive governments to effectively vindicate these rights is leading to real, but entirely avoidable, tensions between parents and staff.

Section 37.1 of the Employment Equality Act allows schools to discriminate against teachers on religious grounds and to take “action which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee or a prospective employee from undermining the religious ethos of the institution”. Who decides what is ‘reasonable’ or what it means to ‘undermine’ the school’s ethos? Certainly not the Department of Education – Irish schools operate as separate legal entities.

If the statutory and governance framework leaves parents and teachers in an impossible position, children are more vulnerable still. Nominally, they have a clearly enshrined Constitutional right under Article 44.2.4 to attend their local school without attending religious instruction. In practice, attempts to exercise this right achieve little. ‘Opted out’ pupils must sit out daily prayers and religious instruction periods and typically remain in the classroom while absorbing the lessons regardless.

None of this is to throw the slightest shade towards Catholics. These are our family members, friends, neighbours, and co-workers. Among a growing community of parents and teachers is simply a conviction that religion is a choice, not an obligation, and that our schools should be places for all.

Education Equality believes that religious faith formation should be offered outside the school day on an opt-in basis, instead of being integrated into the curriculum.

Our education model is an outlier in the developed world. It is failing to meet the needs and expectations of contemporary Irish society.

Ireland has changed – our schools must too.