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Labour wants to remove “faith formation” from schools

Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik wants to take faith formation out of schools entirely. She did not allude to the wishes of parents in this regard.

Speaking at the party’s political think-in with a general election looming Ms Bacik criticised the religious orders after the latest report sex abuse in Catholic schools and said that the pace of divestment of Catholic schools had been glacial. When a particular schools is put up for divestment, parents normally vote for the status quo.

“We need to ensure there’s divestment, that we see that the process initiated by [former Labour leader and Education Minister] Ruairí Quinn is now speeded up and continued, so that religious orders, complicit in such awful horrors in the past, no longer have authority over our schoolchildren in our education system.”

She was non-committal on legislation to speed up divestment, but said the party’s policy was to strip “faith formation” from the curriculum, [1] while allowing broad consideration of all religion in class.

Regarding financial redress for victims of abuse in religious-run schools, she said she wants the religious orders to be “made to pay their share [2].”