The Irish Human Rights Commission (IRHC) has been criticised
over its attitude to religious education and religious freedom at the
conclusion of Catholic Schools Week by Bishop Leo O’Reilly.

The IRHC recently issued a discussion paper on the subject
of religious education and human rights. 
The paper indicated that religious schools might be violating
international human rights law because the ethos of a religious school will
permeate the whole day meaning the child of an atheist won’t be able to escape
the ethos merely by being exempted from religion class.

Speaking today in the Cathedral of SS Patrick and Felim in
Cavan, Bishop O’Reilly said that the right of one person not to have religion
is not more important than the right of the other 99 to have it.

He said that the IHRC believed that “freedom of religion
means freedom from religion.”

Bishop O’Reilly stated: “The Irish Human Rights Commission has produced a discussion
paper recently which claims that because most of the schools in the country are
Catholic, then atheists are being discriminated against because the only school
convenient to them is a Catholic one. This was highlighted by the case of a man
in Dromahaire who got a lot of media attention last week because he took his
son out of the local Catholic school. He didn’t want his son to learn any
religion so his son was excused from the religion classes. But his complaint
was that his son was picking up the prayers that the other children were saying
even outside the religion class.”

He continued: “For him and for the Irish Human Rights
Commission freedom of religion means freedom from religion. They believe that
if one person in the school doesn’t want religion then there should be no
religion in the school. The right of that one person not to have religion is
more important than the rights of the other 99 to have it. It is a strange
understanding of human rights but it’s the one favoured by most people in the
media world.

The Iona Institute has prepared a response to the IHRC
paper.