Don't ask, don't tell?

We have a strange attitude to privacy in this country.

We are wonderfully creative gossips and great at ‘showing cause’ in formulaic ways like attending funerals of people we barely know, but the behind-closed-doors culture is still very much with us.

You wouldn’t want anybody ‘knowing your business’, but official Ireland’s attitude to your private life can often be somewhere to the right of the Spanish Inquisition.

Homosexuality has been decriminalised. Divorce is legal. Children born outside marriage are no longer known as bastards. We have even got civil partnership, although gay marriage and adoption are a way off yet; but they are in sight.

Officially, we’re hunky dory.

Also officially, however, there is a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in full force in our education system.

Section 37.1 of the Employment Equality Act 1998 (rather a misnomer) rules that institutions are not considered to be discriminating against a person if they give favourable treatment to an employee or prospective employee on religious grounds, “in order to maintain the religious ethos of the institution”.

Closing the Vatican Embassy in a fit of pique might have satisfied some people as a revenge mechanism for years of abuse perpetrated by some Church representatives.

But it wasn’t very effective in tackling the real and immediate problems faced by thousands of Irish teachers - and potential teachers – caused by the Church’s lasting influence over massive aspects of our society.

Church control of an enormous majority of Irish schools means that, in effect, there are no job opportunities for gay people, single parents or divorced people in primary or post-primary education. The same applies to people of all other faiths or none.

A school can legally refuse a job applicant on the basis of aspects of their personal life that have nothing whatsoever to do with their job.

Protecting the religious ethos of an institution is an understandable aim of a religious organisation. The ethos of a religion is fully up to that religion’s leadership and its adherents. While the majority of Irish people are Catholic, that majority has dropped drastically, and control of the Church over schools is no longer proportionate.

The problem is that too many of our schools – and teacher training colleges – remain under the remit of the Catholic Church. Approximately 90 per cent of Irish primary schools are Catholic schools..

Plurality in schools is the real solution to this problem. A heterogeneous, multicultural school system that can teach the reality of modern Ireland and cultivate acceptance of those who do not fit the mould of a long-gone holy Catholic Ireland needs to be a priority. This will provide teachers from a multiplicity of backgrounds with job opportunities in environments where their private lives are not an issue.

Minister Quinn has already stated that this is a priority for the Government. Time will tell.