The Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn (pictured), will publish legislation that will force denominational schools to employ openly gay teachers.

Speaking earlier this week at the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI), he said he would look at legislation to amend Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act, the Irish Times reported.

The provision allows religious institutions to refuse to hire anyone who they believe would compromise the organisation’s ethos.

The Minister told delegates that the Programme for Government “contains a commitment that we will remove discriminations against gay people, which prevent them from taking up employment as teachers”.

The Programme for Government, outlined by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition said that people “of non-faith or minority religious backgrounds and publically identified LGBT people should not be deterred from training or taking up employment as teachers in the State.”

The secondary teachers union has led a campaign to amend the Act. 

Last February, Fianna Fáil Senator Averil Power published a draft bill designed to weaken the current protection afforded to religious institutions.

It would insert the following clauses:

“”(7) Nothing in sub-section 1 may be relied upon by an institution referred to in sub-section 1 to justify or permit discrimination or to allow any action to be taken against any employee or potential employee on the basis of that employee’s or potential employee’s civil status or sexual orientation.”

3. Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act 1998 is amended by inserting the following subsection immediately after sub-section (7) (as inserted by section 2 of this Act)

“(8) Nothing in sub-section 1 may be relied upon by an institution referred to in sub-section 1 to justify more favourable treatment of or in respect of one employee or potential employee over another employee or a potential employee on the basis of his or her civil status or sexual orientation.”

Mr Quinn told delegates that he was working with Senator Power, and with Senators Ivana Bacik and Katherine Zappone to amend Section 37.

He said: “In order to move quickly to stamp out such discrimination, I am also in contact with Minister Alan Shatter and the Attorney General, and we will publish proposals in the coming weeks.

“This work to remove discrimination will also be underpinned by the Forum on bullying which will take place on May 17th, and which will be supported by a working group on bullying which will initially focus on tackling homophobic bullying.”

Senator Power said the Programme for Government of the Coalition contains a commitment to change the status quo, which allows a school to claim that hiring a gay teacher would undermine their religious ethos. However, nothing had been done to date in relation to it, she said.

She described the current situation as, “completely unjust,” she said she was putting it up to the Government by publishing legislation and calling on it to accept it.

Senator Power also claimed “schools will still be entitled to insist that staff members demonstrate respect towards their ethos and not actively seek to undermine it” if the Bill was enacted. The amendment as currently worded, however, appears to contain no such saver.