A Labour party senator has issued a call for the Citizens’ Assembly to be resurrected to deal with the ongoing involvement of the Catholic Church in the running of schools in Ireland. In a message posted on facebook, Labour senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin [1] said the next constitutional issue for the country to face is to “break the religious stranglehold over Irish education”. In follow-up comments to media he said: “We have 4,000 schools in the State and there are ongoing issues such as access, employment rights for non-religious teachers, school ethos, sex education and so on [2]. The Citizens’ Assembly could deal with these issues together rather than tinkering with existing laws. This could well be a five- to 10-year process, but it’s a model that has proved to be successful in dealing with marriage equality and abortion.”
His remarks were echoed by the Labour leader, Brendan Howlin, who told the Dail that the school patronage issue was “significant for many right now who want choice in the education they provide for their children. The Citizens’ Assembly model would be a very good way to have that debate and to allow all sides to have an input and be tested in an open way.”
In response, the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said “it is certainly something the Minister for Education and I will consider” [3]. He added that the Cabinet had discussed asking a new assembly to look at the wider issues of gender equality and “to come up with a set of proposals to allow us to follow through in many ways on the result of the referendum and deliver equality between men and women in other areas”. Mr Varadkar said there was work to be done on “the gender pay gap, greater equality in pensions and having far higher participation of women on company boards.