The Government is bracing itself for potential legal challenges for plans to remove the right of some denominational schools to give preference to members of their own faith in admissions to their own schools.
Minister for Education Richard Bruton is due to bring an amendment to school admissions legislation to Cabinet on Tuesday which would prohibit Catholic primary schools in particular, but not schools of other faiths or denominations, from giving enrolment priority to baptised children in cases where they are over-subscribed. While Mr Bruton announced the plans last year, the planned amendment has been subject to extensive legal advice from the Attorney General’s office.
The Irish Times reported earlier this year that Catholic bishops, trustee bodies for thousands of Catholic schools, along with management bodies and missionary groups, were preparing to fight the changes.
Leaders of the Baptist church in Ireland have released a statement urging their members to vote No to retain the Eighth Amendment. “It is our belief that a mark of a truly progressive society is in its commitment to protect its most vulnerable. Any move to eliminate that protection would be a regressive step for our society. The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution recognises the worth of both women and unborn children. The 8th Amendment is a progressive measure that enshrines the equal right to life for all and helps make our society more meaningful, more compassionate and a model for other nations”, it said.
“We, therefore, urge our church members and our fellow citizens to resist this misguided call to repeal the 8th Amendment, and continue to work towards a better, more caring and compassionate society.”
A vigorous defence of the Church’s RSE teaching has been offered by the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin. Speaking at the Joint Managerial Body/Association of Management of Catholic Secondary Schools (JMB/AMCSS) annual conference in Galway on Thursday, he noted that a recent debate in Dáil Éireann described the approach of Catholic Schools to RSE as “backward”, “grossly distorted”, not “objective”, non “factual”, and even biologically incorrect. “It was argued that relationships and sexuality education has to be ‘non-ethos based’. These negative perceptions of the approach to relationships and sexuality education in our schools will sound unfair, harsh, uninformed and agenda-driven to many parents and to those who have been sensitively working in this area within our Catholic schools”.
He agreed that a review of RSE in schools is essential in order to help young people cope with the risks to their health and well-being. “A sound Relationships and Sexuality programme, developed in consultation with parents, will include age appropriate information, debate and discussion about contraception, sexually transmitted infections, same sex attraction and unions and the full meaning of consent,” he said.
RSE should be an integral part of the curriculum in a Catholic school and it should present the positive and challenging “Catholic vision for relationships, chastity, marriage and the family”.
A bill that would criminalise the ministry of many Church groups to those with same-sex attraction, including the Catholic ministry Courage Ireland, was enthusiastically welcomed by senators from all parties when it was debated for the first time in the Seanad on Thursday.
Courage does not teach ‘conversion therapy’, but does help gay Catholics to live celibate lives if they so wish. Banning such a group could be unconstitutional. Speaking for the Government, Minister of State Catherine Byrne did say there might be legal problems with aspects of the bill, but otherwise, the bill was warmly received by the Government.
The bill by Senator Fintan Warfield of Sinn Féin would make it unlawful to advertise, perform or even offer to perform “any practice or treatment by any person that seeks to change, suppress and, or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and, or gender expression“. The bill also provides criminal sanctions of up to 12 months in jail for offences against the law.
“I believe in this Bill. While a number of issues have been raised at the legal end, I believe the Bill should be enacted as soon as possible. It is very important that people should not be coerced or in any way made feel they are not a whole person due to their identity or sexual orientation, and that they have the right to choose their sexuality now and into the future”, she said.
The Catholic Church has called Gardaí to investigate images apparently showing a man in priest’s vestments performing a sex act with another man on the altar of an Irish church. The church confirmed to the Irish Independent the matter had been reported to gardaí and a full investigation is expected to follow. A spokesperson for the diocese declined to comment further for legal reasons in view of “the criminal nature of the alleged incident”.
The graphic images show two men engaged in sexual activity or in intimate poses across what appears to be the altar of a small country church. They have been described as deeply sacrilegious in their depiction of a priest, or man dressed as a priest.
Any investigation will examine the veracity of the images, and the church where the act is alleged to have taken place. “The photographs depict something that appears somewhat satanic,” the source told the Irish Independent.
The LoveBoth campaign has said the Irish public are being consistently and seriously misled about the nature of the Government’s proposed abortion regime. Speaking at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, the group said the level of misinformation has now reached a new high as, they claimed, both the Government and leading repeal campaigners are willing to say anything in their push to introduce abortion on demand to Ireland.
Cora Sherlock of LoveBoth said: “The tsunami of misinformation and manipulation of the Irish people in this debate has to stop. The debate on the Eighth Amendment has to be grounded on fact and on what is actually being proposed by the government, and the reality of abortion in neighbouring countries. Anything less than frank, open and factual discussion is an insult to the Irish people.”
Joining her, Consultant Obstetrician Dr Trevor Hayes sharply criticised recent commentary on maternal healthcare services in Ireland. “In my many years of medical practice I have never been prevented by the Eighth Amendment from doing everything necessary to fully care for women and to fully protect them in my practice. Any suggestion that Irish doctors cannot intervene to protect women is deliberately misinforming the Irish public and creating unnecessary fears. I’ve never gambled with the lives of my patients. I’ve never lost a mother. The Eighth Amendment has never prevented me from doing my job to the best of my ability.”
He continued: “Professional guidelines for obstetricians are very clear, there is no doubt whatsoever nor should there be any doubt that we can intervene to protect the life of women, doctors do not have to wait until the threat to life has become imminent.”
Dr Hayes added: “I am very concerned that recent weeks have seen significant and untrue public statements about the practice of maternal healthcare in this country. No doctor doing their job properly would wait until there is an immediate and critical threat to a pregnant woman’s life before acting to protect the woman, the Eighth Amendment does not stop me from doing my job. Never has and never will. If repeal were to happen, 99% percent of abortions would take place for any reason at all or on supposed mental health grounds. That’s the reality based on what has happened in other countries but you wouldn’t think it based on how the present debate is being conducted”.
Proposals to raise the digital age of consent from 13 to 16 years of age were rejected by an Oireachtas committee on Wednesday. At a meeting of the Oireachtas justice committee, Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Social Democrats sought to raise the age of digital consent through an amendment to data protection legislation. FF’s justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan said 13 was “too young” and meant young people were vulnerable to being exploited. “We must recognise now that children are growing up with levels of intrusion that we didn’t experience,” he said. Mr O’Callaghan noted that a child could not legally enter a contract until aged 18. He was supported by Labour TD Sean Sherlock who said by making 16 the age limit, the onus was being pushed back on to the social media companies.
Independent TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly argued strongly for 13, citing a wide range of expert opinion behind that threshold, including the Children’s Rights Alliance. Both said that education was the best protection for children and not a “nanny state”.
The move was welcomed by children’s rights groups.
Three times as many of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party are campaigning for a No vote than a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment. At least 35 Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators have coalesced into a group to campaign to save the pro-life amendment, including deputy leader Dara Calleary and the party’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath. The group is led by Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford Mary Butler. The group held a photocall yesterday with 31 members, including frontbench spokespersons Eamon Ó Cuív, Niamh Smyth, Anne Rabbitte and Margaret Murphy O’Mahony. Another four, TDs John McGuiness, Willie O’Dea, Kevin O’Keeffe and Senator Diarmuid Wilson, sent their apologies. Yesterday’s photocall was in response to a similar photo taken two weeks ago at the same venue attended by a mere 10 members calling for a Yes vote.
Consultant psychiatrist Patricia Casey has said that to suggest abortion is a solution to mental illness “is naïve in the extreme”. Referring to 2010 study headed by Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, she said it found “whether a woman had an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy, or gave birth, made no difference to her mental health outcome”.
She said the General Schema of the Government’s proposed abortion legislation was “very vague in relation to psychiatric assessment”. It contained no definition of mental health and under its terms any medical practitioner could decide an abortion was necessary. “That, to me, is a gross deficiency in the Bill,” she said.
It could mean “a single doctor, specialty unspecified, can carry out an immediate termination of pregnancy where he or she is of the reasonable opinion that there is immediate risk of serious harm to the mental health of a woman, and it will be lawful to carry that out up until birth”, she said.
The Bill went “much farther than the politicians are pretending . It is extreme, it is unsupportable, and it is not based on any evidence,” she said.
Save the 8th spokesman John McGuirk has accused the pro-Repeal ‘Together for Yes’ campaign of desperately avoiding mention of abortion and the legislation that would follow upon repeal of the Eighth Amendment. “Posters up around the country saying yes for compassion, yes for care, yes for kittens, yes for puppies, not talking about the issue, not talking about the real facts, what’s in this Bill. They have a case to answer,” he said. “All they have been doing is engaging in platitudes. We think there is room for a real debate. That hasn’t happened yet and we hope that it will,” he said. The Government have already published the general schema of the abortion legislation it would introduce were the Eighth Amendment deleted from the constitution. The heads of the bill provide for unrestricted abortion for the first three months of pregnancy, abortion for serious threat to mental or physical health up to viability, around the sixth month of gestation, and abortion up to birth where the child has a life-limiting condition.
