In August the new government formed in May said it was committed to holding a constitutional referendum, after completing consultations and preparing the necessary legislation, on the question of whether to revoke the constitutional provision making blasphemy a punishable offense.
In January then-Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan abolished a 50-year-old official rule giving religion a privileged status in schools: “Of all the parts of the school curriculum religious instruction is by far the most important, as its subject-matter, God’s honor and service, includes the proper use of all man’s faculties, and affords the most powerful inducements to their proper use.” Previously, 30 minutes of each primary school day were allocated for religious education, which often consisted of teaching about the religious group of the school’s patron. Equate, an NGO for children’s rights that advocates for changes in primary and secondary school education, said the abolition of the rule was “a very significant moment for education reform.”
In September the Archbishop of Dublin said that the process of divestment – the process of denominational schools becoming nondenominational – was too slow. He also said he did not believe it was appropriate for school enrollment to depend on a baptismal certificate. In June Minister for Education Richard Bruton said he wanted to accelerate the divestment of some Catholic primary schools, but there were no schools divested during the year. He outlined plans to provide an average of 20 new multidenominational and nondenominational schools per year by 2030.
The government began to open more schools with nonreligious patronage. The New Schools Establishment Group advised Minister Bruton on patronage of new schools to be established. In November the minister announced nine new post-primary schools (total of 8,200 places) would be established in 2017 and 2018, under the patronage of nondenominational groups Educate Together and the Education and Training Boards (statutorily based local authorities) as recommended by the New Schools Establishment Group. Five new nondenominational primary schools opened in September including four Educate Together schools. A similar number is to open in September 2017 and 2018 but no decision has yet been made on who should run the new schools.
School patrons, generally affiliated with religious denominations, continued to define the ethos of the schools and determine the development and implementation of religious education curriculum in primary schools. The curriculum varied by school and could include teaching about the patron’s religion, the religious history of the country, or an overview of world religions. The NGO Equate released the results of a survey conducted in 2015 in which 87 percent of respondents agreed the government had a responsibility to ensure children did not experience religious discrimination in school curricula and 84 percent agreed the education system should be reformed so no child was excluded because of his or her religion or lack of religion.
Parents of non-baptized children continued to report difficulty in enrolling in some local, religiously based schools that were oversubscribed because schools were allowed to accept Catholic children first. In rural areas, parents said finding alternatives to schools with Catholic patrons was especially difficult. According to the media website TheJournal.ie, parents were angry with the slow divestment process and reported feeling they had no other option than to have their children baptized in order to obtain admission into their only local school, which in most cases was Catholic. Other parents said they refused to baptize their children and demanded the provision of a baptismal certificate be dropped as a requirement for school enrollment. In a January compliance review of the country by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the committee raised concerns at the small number of nondenominational schools in the country and with discriminatory practices in admissions policies on the basis of a child’s religion. The NGO Education Equality organized a march, which gathered 600 participants, in July to call for equality in the provision of education regardless of religion.
In December Lord Mayor of Dublin Brendan Carr launched a Dublin City Interfaith Charter to promote religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, and religious diversity in Dublin. The charter was signed by members of the Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Sikh communities.
Several state agencies, including the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Garda (national police) Racial and Intercultural Office (GRIO), continued to enforce equality legislation and worked on behalf of minority religious groups. They organized community events to include individuals of diverse faiths and reviewed legislation about religious hate crimes, among other topics. The GRIO’s liaison officers continued to engage with immigrant minority religious groups on a regular basis to inform them of police services and educate them on their rights. They supported integration by involving members of ethnic and religious minority communities in community social events. For example, in July Garda officers attended an interfaith celebration to mark the end of Ramadan in Cork.
On January 24, the prime minister, the foreign minister, and other senior government officials participated in the national Holocaust Day Memorial commemoration organized by the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland, in association with the Department of Justice and Equality, the Office for the Promotion of Migrant Integration, and Dublin City Council.
The government is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.