I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise this matter. For the benefit of my colleagues I will read out the text of the matter that I want to raise here. It is the failure of the Department of Foreign Affairs to forward to the secretariat of the Inter-governmental Conference a document submitted by the Campaign for the Separation of Church and State alleging discrimination on religious grounds in the Republic and directly relevant to the stated concern of the Anglo-Irish Agreement to bring about peace and reconciliation in all of Ireland.
The Campaign for the Separation of Church and State are a very reputable civil rights association. They have impressed me very much by the moderate tone of their approach and by the very impressive depth of their research. I would not lightly agree to sponsor a group who did not have this responsible approach. It is interesting that their guiding principles have been endorsed by leading Irish Catholic churchmen. In fact, their ultimate goal would seem to be the same as the goals fervently expressed by Bishop Cathal Daly at the New Ireland Forum and endorsed by Cardinal Ó Fiach on numerous occasions since then. Never mind that this is a belated recognition by churchmen of their own best interests, namely, that it is in the interests of the Church that it should be separated from the State. My personal view is that it is in the best interests of the Church that it should be always teetering on the edge of persecution.
The aims that they espouse are the aims of the leading Roman Catholic churchmen. They are also the classical aims of Republicanism. Our best Republican thinkers in the past knew that there would have to be an Irish nationality which would have to separate Church and State, whether it was the established Protestant Church, or whether they could see into the future of a quasi-established Roman Catholic Church. This is a highly respectable organisation with a highly respectable objective.
The document I referred to which they sent to the Department of Foreign Affairs is far from being a frivolous document. It is very well researched. It is a document of substance. It is not relevant here to go in any detail in to the document itself. I am concerned about the lack of action by the Department of Foreign Affairs when they received the document. It is relevant to point out that the main theme of the document is that we are very far from a separation of Church and State in this Republic. The Church and State are intermeshed in a most undersirable way and in such a universal way that we are not aware of it, it is such a part of the scene. In particular, the areas of health and education contain large sectors which are publicly funded but denominationally controlled.
Historians will recall that one of the great themes of 19th century Church-State relations under British rule was the attempt of the Catholic bishops to secure the domination of the educational field under their direction and the reluctance of the British liberal and secular establishment to concede that principle. In the end the bishops won, because they were allowed to denominationalise areas which were supposed to be theoretically secular. The primary schools are an obvious example.
One of the areas where there is denominational control over public funding, and which is a grave cause of concern, is teacher training. It is impossible in this jurisdiction for someone who wants to be a primary teacher, but who subscribes to no institutional religion — and this is a growing section of the population — to have access to a suitable area of training, to an area which is not dominated and controlled by denominational forces. That, in itself, is an argument for being concerned about this integration of Church and State.
The state of affairs is that in health and education — in health for example, trainee nurses, both in their training and in the opportunities available to them when they are trained — we come up against this area of denominational control. The principle of separation of Church and State is contradicted in practice. It violates the Constitution because there is more than one constitutional provision which upholds the right of the citizens to be equally treated without distinction of religion and there is another provision in the Constitution which says there shall be no endowment of religion even though there are chaplains to community schools who are paid out of public funds, which is the essence of endowment.
The present practice in all these areas violates minority rights. The minority in question here are not Protestants in the sense in which we understand it. I wonder if the Protestants do not share this undesirable state of affairs because what happens is that the Protestants have their slice of denominational control out of public funds, arguably in the interests of sustaining the Protestant ethos. I sometimes wonder if the Protestant ethos is simply not any more than keeping them separate from the Catholics and ensuring that their own people get the jobs.
They are not the minority who are being discriminated against in the Republic. The real and growing minority are that dissident body of people who, as Catholics, simply do not subscribe to the totality of control by bishops and who want to see the separation of Church and State. As the census return shows, the largest religious minority now in the Republic are the non-religious minority, those who now have the courage to declare themselves at successive censuses as not belonging to any particular religious group. It is they who are being discriminated against in areas that I talk about. They are the new Protestants as it were. They are the new discriminated against minority.
One of the core problems that was addressed by the Anglo-Irish Agreement was discrimination against minorities. Admittedly, the most obvious example of that is in Northern Ireland but, if you look at the text, the Agreement by no means confines the resolution of these problems to the area of Northern Ireland. The spirit of the Agreement is against discrimination of any kind in Ireland. The reconciliation spoken of in the Agreement is reconciliation in Ireland as a whole. The Agreement is conscious of the historic nature of the objectives laid out here and there is no doubt that reconciliation is meant as a two-way process and inter-denominational relations are not simply confined to Northern Ireland alone.
I cite, as I have done in the text of my motion, article 2 (b) where it says: "The conference will be mainly concerned with Northern Ireland but some of the matters will involve co-operative action in both parts of the island of Ireland." Article 4 (a) sections (1) and (2) are concerned with peace, stability and prosperity throughout the island of Ireland by promoting reconciliation, respect for human rights, etc.
It seems that the spirit and the letter of the Agreement are, in effect, being violated by the existing state of affairs. That is the essence of the document submitted by the Campaign for the Separation of Church and State. Therefore, I would argue that there is a strong prima facie case for putting this on the agenda of the Intergovernmental Conference and that it is vital in the end that we sort ourselves out in this regard, that we separate Church from State just as much as it is that discrimination on the grounds of religion ceases in Northern Ireland.
The facts of this particular case are fairly incontestable. It may well be that the Department would contest a point or two. The facts as they have been given to me — I have no reason to doubt them — are as follows: The Campaign for the Separation of Church and State approached the Department of Foreign Affairs and they submitted to them this document for transmission to the secretariat for consideration by the secretariat. That was made perfectly clear. My information further is that in the initial conversations the campaign people were promised that it would be forwarded. The document was submitted eight weeks ago, on February 26. I understand that this, in effect, is the only way for a concerned group of citizens to approach the Intergovernmental Conference. The secretariat, after all, is virtually incommunicado, so what would you do only go to the Department of Foreign Affairs with an important document?
Despite the initial promise of the exchanges, it would appear that after two months nothing has been done. The document was never forwarded. The Campaign for the Separation of Church and State have got no formal acknowledgement of their submission. It would appear further that, on 25 April after the Press had been alerted, Department officials began to say: "Well, we have not forwarded it. We are not obliged to forward it", and there the case rests. All the evidence is that the Department regard this as a highly politically sensitive subject and simply are dragging their feet on this issue. As I have said, we have to realise that, if we are talking about the totality of relationships, that much-vaunted phrase, the reciprocity of relationships, we must attend to the beam in our own eye.
The Conference today had on its agenda the whole business of religious discrimination and it seems to me that the Department of Foreign Affairs missed a valuable opportunity to face up to our responsibilities in this matter by not forwarding this document to be considered at today's Conference. It is, indeed, a great pity that the Campaign for the Separation of Church and State in the end had to have recourse to the British Embassy which, of course, willingly agreed to forward the document to the secretariat. That should not have had to be done. It puts the matter in a kind of adversarial context. It should not be a question of the British Embassy having to score points over their Irish counterparts for not living up to their obligations. That is a great pity, indeed.
That is the situation. It is a great pity that the Department of Foreign Affairs are not recognising that, if there is to be reconciliation in Ireland, it has to be a two way process and that, by not forwarding the document, they are helping to violate the spirit, and arguably, the letter of its provisions. There can be no reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant in the North as long as the Republic is perceived, with very good reason, as having large areas of public life dominated by the Catholic ethos. That is the vital matter being addressed by the Campaign for the Separation of Church and State and, irrespective of the Minister's reply, the issue is a large one.
Down here, most people think of discrimination as something that happens up there. It is an unfamiliar one; it is a startling one; but one that is vital to the solution of our deeply rooted historical problems in this country, the ingrained infection of bigotry and discrimination which is shared by the island at large. If the Department of Foreign Affairs do not realise that, it is time they did. It is a political nettle to be grasped. What is at issue really is nothing less than reversing the course of Irish history. I did not intend to conclude on such a cosmic note. I look forward to hearing the reason why this matter was not properly addressed by the Department of Foreign Affairs.
