Maria Steen of The Iona Institute was on RTE’s Claire Byrne Live last night to debate whether or not denominational schools should be allowed to select pupils on the basis of the religion of the school when there are too many applications for the number of available places at the school. The debate can be...
On Tuesday, David Quinn appeared on three separate local radio stations defending the admissions policies of faith-based schools. This was in response to a speech given on Monday by the Minister for Education, Richard Bruton, who promised to change those school’s preference for children of their own community. His interview with Tommy Marren of Mid-West...
A new law has been passed in Ontario that strikes the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from the law and replaces them with the word ‘parent’. This places a lie right at the centre of the law because every child without fail has a mother and a father or could not exist. But this is what...
A conference was held in Dublin last week called ‘Safe Ireland’. The intention was to draw attention to, and find ways of reducing, violence against women and children. One issue it appears not to have gone near is whether there is a link to family structure. That was a big oversight. Broadcaster Olivia O’Leary warned...
It seems family structure matters after all. An important new paper from the ESRI devotes a chapter to this question, and after controlling for factors like poverty, it nonetheless finds that being raised in a two parent household as distinct from a one parent household can confer certain advantages on children. The paper is called...
I had a very interesting debate about childcare on RTE’s Today with Sean O’Rourke yesterday. I was debating ex-Senator Jillian Van Turnhout, formerly of the Children’s Rights Alliance. I argued in favour of parental choice when it comes to child-minding. Jillian argued in favour of State-sponsored, State-funded, State-regulated ‘early education’. It was a clash of...
Here in Ireland, there is a strong campaign against faith schools. Their ethos is under attack for not being ‘inclusive’ enough, as is their admissions policy. Meanwhile, the British Government has just heaped praise on Catholic schools and said more are to be built in order to meet public demand. The contrast with the situation...
‘Mind the Gap’, a new report from The Iona Institute, shows how a person’s chances of marrying are hugely affected by the social class they are born into. The report shows that upper professional workers are more than twice as likely as unskilled workers to be married. The huge discrepancy shows that there are formidable...
‘Mind the Gap’, a new report from The Iona Institute, shows how a person’s chances of marrying are hugely affected by the social class they are born into. The report shows that upper professional workers are more than twice as likely as unskilled workers to be married. The huge discrepancy shows that there are formidable...
In January, the Iona Institute and the Irish Catholic newspaper held a conference called ‘Pope Francis and the Future of the Family’. It was a reflection on the two Synods on the Family that took place in Rome in 2014 and 2015 and which led to the Apostolic Exhortation, ‘Amoris Laetitia’ in April. The keynote...
