Amun Bains is a journalist.



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The first amendment to the US constitution starts “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”



Our constitution is not quite so concise. Article 44 of De Valera’s handbook for governing deals with freedom of religion. Section one says “The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.”



But then section hits reverse gear somewhat and starts “Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen.”



It goes on saying “The State guarantees not to endow any religion” and “The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.”



So we have freedom or religion, sort of.



Section four starts “Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate between schools under the management of different religious denominations…” That is a cute bit of phrasing, it says that you can’t discriminate between different religious denominations, but it does not prohibit discriminating against non-religious schools, or their pupils.



It continues saying that legislation must not affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.



So that’s where they are throwing a bone to the non-religious, but it’s a pretty limited one. It’s saying that if a school is receiving public money – which is pretty much all of them – it must allow pupils to attend school without attending religious instruction.



So the non-religious are not entitled to protection from discrimination in education in the way that religious are. You have a right to protection from discrimination for which religion you practice, but not from discrimination for being non-religious.



The last two sections of the article give special protection to the property of religious denomination – they can’t have their property taken away, and they have a right to manage that property and other assets as they see fit.



Note that this guarantee about property is given to each religious denomination, but not to any other organisation or individual. Religions get special protection for their property, but I want to go back to the supposed right that non-religious pupils have to attend publicly-funded religious schools, but skip the religious indoctrination.



The Catholic church and the schools that they run – still the vast majority of the schools in the country – have a long history of making life as awkward and difficult as possible for parents who didn’t want their children to be given religious indoctrination. There is no reason why religion classes couldn’t be scheduled for Wednesday or Friday afternoons, so those who didn’t want to go could go home early.



But instead, the bishops instruct each of their schools to have a religion class every day around noon. They also take advantage of the fact that the constitution says that they can’t compel parents to have their children attend, but there is nothing to say what they have to do instead.



So a common practice is to tell parents that they – the parents – must make their own arrangements for their children to be taken care of during this period, every single day, right in the middle of the school day.