Parents have a right to choose denominational schools and that right needs to be guaranteed by the State, Independent Senator Ronan Mullen (pictured) has said in the Seanad just days before Ireland appears before the UN Human Rights Council.

Fianna Fail’s Jim Walsh reminded that Seanad that some of the UN treaties to which we are signatories uphold the traditional definition of marriage, while Fine Gael’s Paul Bradford said something is not necessarily a human right simply because we declare it to be so.

The Senators were speaking on Wednesday as Dr Maurice Manning, chairman of the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) addressed the Seanad ahead of our appearance before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next Thursday.

Ireland’s appearance will be part of a process called the ‘Universal Periodic Review’ whereby member-states of the UN appear the UN body to report on how well they are abiding by international human rights standards.

However, UN monitoring committees often interpret UN human rights treaties in a manner that is not borne out by the texts of the treaties themselves. For example, in 2008, the UN Human Rights Committee criticised Ireland over the issue of abortion.

In addition, we have been told to provide schools for parents who do not want a denominational education for their children. However, countries with relatively few denominational schools, such as France, have not been told the opposite.

Senator Mullen said that “we in Ireland need to identify education according to particular values of faith or philosophy as being a right to be enjoyed by families for their children as taxpayers in harmony and in concert with the right of people who want a different kind of education”.

Senator Mullen referred to a document produced by the IHRC in May which warned faith schools not to “indoctrinate” or “proselytise” their pupils.

The report said that, if the State chose to retain the current patronage model in which denominational schools predominate, “significant modifications will be required in order to meet human rights standards”.

The State, it said, “must take sufficient care that information and knowledge included in the curriculum is conveyed in an objective, critical and pluralistic”.

In response, Senator Mullen said that in the document “there was insufficient definition of terms such as ‘indoctrination’ and ‘proselytism’”.

He added: “On the concept of bringing children through an education system in a way that is harmonious with the religious values of parents who are also taxpayers, we would need to be careful not to denigrate that as indoctrination and proselytism, but rather to recognise that an authentic human rights approach to education is one that will recognise plurality based on parental choice, and with considerable and substantial State support to ensure different choices in our society are respected.”

Senator Jim Walsh told the Seanad that Article 16 that the UN Declaration of Human Rights “acknowledges the equality between women and men and also the duties of society and the State to protect family, the natural and fundamental group unit of society, based on marriage between men and women”.

Senator Walsh also referred to Article 23 of the1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states that “the natural family based on marriage shall be protected by society and the state”.

He said that leading academics Professor Robert Putnam and Maurice Glasman from London Metropolitan University have both stated that the decline in marriage had caused grievous harm to society.

Senator Manning said that Senator Walsh “raised many philosophical questions with which I am not sure I would be able to wrestle at the moment”.

He also thanked Senator Mullen for his contribution, but suggested that his questions on education would be better addressed within the Government’s proposed Constitutional Convention, which it is setting up to consider a range of issues.

In the Programme for Government, it says the Convention will examine proposals to introduce, among other things, same-sex marriage and will consider other “relevant constitutional amendments that may be recommended by the Convention”.

Fine Gael Senator Paul Bradford suggested that “the language of human rights sometimes can be misinterpreted or abused”.

Citing an article by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks he said when human rights became “more than a defence of human dignity, which is their proper sphere, and become instead a political ideology” then “human rights become human wrongs”.