EQUALITY:GAY AND bisexual teachers feel threatened by laws which could allow school managements to dismiss teachers in order to protect their ethos, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) annual conference heard.
Deputy INTO general secretary Noel Ward said sections of the Employment Equality Act meant that some workers were more equal than others.
Section 37 of the Act provides denominational schools with an exemption allowing them to take “reasonably necessary” action to prevent an employee or prospective employee “from undermining” its religious ethos.
Mr Ward said this gave sweeping powers to school managements. Teachers in denominational schools shouldn’t feel threatened if they were for example gay or bisexual, or divorced, he said.
He said there was an implicit message in some church quarters that teachers should hide their sexual orientation unless they were heterosexual. He asked: “How can a teacher by being homosexual undermine a school’s ethos? What kind of weak, uncertain ethos is it that can be undermined just because we all know a teacher is gay or lesbian?”
He said the INTO viewed the exemption as unnecessary and inappropriate in legislation whose fundamental purpose was the promotion of equality between employed persons.
“Well over 90 per cent of all primary schools in this State could potentially claim the special protection of section 37. These schools are State funded and teachers are paid by the State yet their denominational employers have available a broad and unspecific entitlement to discriminate.”
It was time, he said, for section 37 to be confined to history. “When legislation on civil partnerships is enacted shortly, I believe a number of our gay and lesbian members will wish to register their partnerships, and teachers who are cohabiting may wish to seek the protections in the Bill also. They should not have to worry about being on a public register of partnerships, and I call on the denominational managerial bodies to make clear now that they should have no such fear.”
Fintan Cronin (Wicklow) said it was wrong for any act of the Oireachtas to regard primary schools as religious institutions. “It is time that schools were properly recognised in law as public services, open to all citizens regardless of race or creed. The day that schools are regarded as the instruments of power and indoctrination in the hands of priests and bishops is, I hope, coming to an end.”
The motion was passed by the congress.
On school buildings, Brendan Horan (Tipperary) said the current programme was a disgrace.
“No school with a building application knows where it is with its application and has no idea when work can commence or have any projections for when work will be completed. Indeed the only building work that is happening is where devolved grants have been given to boards or there are emergency works schemes in place.”
The INTO named Jim Higgins as its new president. The new vice-president is Noreen Flynn.