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This editorial reflects on the Irish state’s performance before the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child in Geneva last Thursday.nnThe proceedings there can be viewed on this webcast: http://www.treatybodywebcast.org/crc-71st-session-ireland/nnEditorialnnTHOUGH Enda Kennys statements on the possibility of a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment should he be returned to power of course falls some…

This is an exchange in the Dail on 8 March 1978 between Deputy John Horgan (Lab) and then Minister for Education, John Wilson (FF).nnThere is nothing new under the sun in relation to ongoing human rights concerns about Rule 69 application in our National Schools.nnBoards of Management had been instigated in our schools in 1976.nnI…

Letter to Editor in The Irish Times, 31 December 2015 from April Duff of Education Equality. n This statement is important because it sets out to deal with the two abnegations of human rights taking place in our National Schools under Roman Catholic patronage. n (1) religion tests in the form of baptismal certificates being…

John Colgan has a Letter to Editor in today’s Irish Examiner about the ‘Rules for National Schools (1965)’.nnThe letter needs to be read in the context that these Rules are not a true statement of the current rules governing our National Schools as no codification has taken place since 1965.nnThe education minister’s mention of the…

n nnhttps://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2015-12-08a.319nnRuth Coppinger (Socialist Party, Dublin West)nnI move:n That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to end religious discrimination in admission to primary and post-primary educational establishments and to provide for full participation of pupils of all faiths and none in primary and post-primary educational establishments. nThis is aimed at ending…

The Irish National Schools’ Trust (INST) organisation has permitted us to reproduce its brief history of our ‘National School’ system on our web-site.nnIt comes as a Powerpoint presentation in two parts (PDF due to file size).IrishNationalSchoolsTrust-presenntation-#1 Irish National Schools’ Trust presentation#2nnThe full extent of the State’s involvement in concealment of the open-to-all origins of our…

The Irish state is pushing parents to the brink of despair with its religion-based school enrolment laws. I can vouch for this because I am one of them. The birth of my beautiful boy Cormac back in March was a time of unbridled joy, but I learned shortly afterwards that our local state primary school…

On 24 February we wrote an open letter to each cabinet member, including An Taoiseach, calling on the office holders to defer moving the 35th Amendment Bill until such time as Article 12.8 was repealed (Presidential Oath).nnhttp://www.cscs.ie/?m=201503nnWe had a tiny number of replies from cabinet and Oireachtas members. It was similar for the TDs. No…