AMENDMENTS to the Equality Employment Bill, put forward on behalf of teachers by INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, will be discussed in the Seanad tomorrow. The Bill, recently passed in the Dail, "appears to demand more of teachers now than from the pupils' parents," according to the INTO.

It raises many questions, says O'Toole, such as "who should introduce pupils to Prayers or the Ten Commandments - the teacher or the parent of Christian children?"

The INTO feels that the Bill "allows teachers' careers to be put at risk because of aspects of their private lives. There is no such pressure or demand on the parents of the pupils."

One of the proposed amendments in section 23 is to delete the words "no reasonable person" and replace them with "it would be reasonable having regard to all the circumstances, to". A further amendment in section 37 proposes to add a paragraph that states "provided that discrimination is on grounds other than the gender ground, the age ground, the marital ground, the family status ground, the sexual orientation ground, the race ground or the Travelling community ground," A further amendment says that section 40 should read as follows: "40 (3) in subsection (2), confidential information means any information which relates to a particular individual; which can be identified as so relating, to the disclosure of which that individual does not agree and which is not reasonable for X to require."

The changes are being proposed by O'Toole, David Norris and Mary Henry. O'Toole says in a statement issued on Friday that "there is something deeply disingenuous about an arrangement which, while rightly allowing freedom and protection to parents in the area of marital or personal status and sexual orientation, does not extend the same rights to the teachers of those parents' children".