News Release 25 July 2008

Highest UN Human Rights Committee Supports Educate Together's Case for National Network of Schools

In the past weeks, the 93rd Session of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations considered Ireland's reports under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This committee which is the highest UN authority on human rights issued its concluding observations today.

Its observations includes wide-ranging recommendations on Irish human rights issues including the legal status of same gender partnerships, legislation against domestic violence, equality for women, definition of terrorist acts, the control of suspicious('extraordinary rendition') flights, state of emergencies, abortion policy, rights of suspects, complaints against Gardai, prison reform, human trafficking, asylum and immigration procedures, the need for the Special Criminal Court, religious oaths for judges, non-denominational education and the recognition of Travellers as an ethnic group.

Educate Together is particularly interested in the committee's observations on education which states:

" The Committee notes with concern that the vast majority of Ireland’s primary schools are privately run denominational schools that have adopted a religious integrated curriculum thus depriving many parents and children who so wish to have access to secular primary education. (arts. 2, 18, 24, 26).

The State party should increase its efforts to ensure that non-denominational primary education is widely available in all regions of the State party, in view of the increasingly diverse and multi-ethnic composition of the population of the State party."

Furthermore, this issue has been identified as one of top three priority areas that the State must give attention to and must report to the Committee on within one year. The other two areas are counter terrorism legislation and prison conditions.

This observation further re-enforces the recommendations made by other UN Committees and the Council of Europe over the past five years. (Committee on CERD-Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination), CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) and the Framework Convention on National Minorities (Council of Europe).

We are particularly pleased that the Human Rights Committee has supported the case first presented to the UN by Educate Together in 2005, that there is a fundamental human rights violation involved in the failure of the Irish State to ensure that all families have access to schools that guarantee equality of access and esteem to children irrespective of religious backgrounds. We congratulate Dr. Alison Mawhinney and our other supporters who ably represented this case to the committee at the recent hearings and in written submissions.

The Committee considered the effect of the overwhelming predominance of faith-based schools in Ireland on families who wished for a secular educational alternative. Within this, it considered the pressure placed on parents not to avail of their legal right to ensure that their children are absent from faith-forming content in school. This pressure consists of concern for the socialisation of children who are separated from their peers on account of the religious identity. It is important to note that the current proposed configuration of the new community national schools to be piloted in Dublin 15, which is based on the registration and separation of children according to family religious identity, will not address the issues brought to the committee.

Educate Together is committed to work in partnership with the government and other providers to address this issue. The opening of 12 new Educate Together schools this September - largely at the organisation's own expense - is evidence of this commitment. This progress still does not meet the scale of demand from parents throughout the country or demographic projections.

We, once again, call on the Department of Education and Science to work with Educate Together to address this growing human rights issue in a planned and positive manner. This means that the current position whereby the Department is only part-funding the development work for new Educate Together schools, provides completely inadequate start-up funding for the boards of new schools and will not fund the training of teachers to deliver the Educate Together curriculum must cease.

ENDS