Ireland will defend our education system against accusations that it is guilty of de facto religious when a Government delegation appears before the UN Human Rights Council next week.

However, the Government has partially accepted a recommendation to amend legislation which allows denominational schools to protect their ethos through their hiring policies.

In a report to be presented to the Council, the State will say there is a growing non-denominational school sector in Ireland which caters for all pupils, according to a report in the Irish Times. However, it adds: “The existing system of school admissions is currently under review, and issues of access are being considered as part of that review process.”

The report also suggested that the Government was open to changing Article 37 of the 1998 Employment Equality Act, which allows denominational institutions such as schools or hospitals to refuse to hire teachers on the basis that their lifestyles could undermine the ethos of those institutions.

In response to a recommendation by Switzerland to amend Article 37, said that the Government was committed to ensuring that “publically identified LGBT people should not be deterred from training or taking up employment as teachers in the state”. 

“The Government is currently examining how this commitment can be implemented,” the report added.

The report is a response to a series of recommendations made last year as part of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

(The Iona Institute issued a briefing document ahead of the UPR which highlighted how UN human rights documents are often interpreted in ways not supported by the text of the documents themselves. This can be downloaded from here).

One of the reviewing states, Egypt, suggested that Ireland’s system of educational provision amounted to “de facto religious discrimination”.

However, the State’s response rejects this, saying that religious groups “are free to establish their own schools to cater for members of their particular faith. This religious freedom is a core element in our system at primary and secondary level”.

Member states have made 126 recommendations to Ireland to improve its human rights standards in areas such as children’s rights, detention and mental health.

Ireland accepted most of the recommendations at meetings last year, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter undertook to look at 50 of them in greater detail.

Of these, Ireland has fully accepted 29 recommendations, “partially accepted” a further 17, and has rejected four, one of which includes a call to recognise Travellers as an official minority.

In its response, the State says there are a number of issues around the proposal of recognising Travellers as a separate ethnic minority which need to be considered further. “It is an area which is . . . being given serious consideration,” the report states.

Among the accepted recommendations are, providing legal recognition for children’s rights; strengthening our legal framework to protect vulnerable people such as women, older people and those with disabilities, and developing and adopting a gender parity law.

The State will formally present its report to a session of the UN Human Rights Council next week.

At last year’s meeting, representatives from six countries pressed Ireland to legalise abortion, namely Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands. Denmark recommended legalising abortion in cases of rape, incest, or in “situations where the pregnancy puts the physical or mental health or wellbeing of the pregnant woman or a pregnant girl in danger”.

Meanwhile, Finland, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom asked Ireland what it intended to do to give further recognition to non-marital, or what it called “modern, pluralist and inclusive family relationships” and how it intended to improve children’s rights.