The Workers Party accepts that religious beliefs and practices are arguably aspects of human life worthy of critical study at school level, although we note that millions of school children around the world, in countries as diverse as France and China do not have any religious education as part of the school curriculum.

As an anti-sectarian and secularist party, the Workers Party believes that members of religious denominations should play no part in devising the religious studies curricula in our public schools. Other countries such as Germany and Great Britain involve churches in the development of the religious education curriculum, and yet others such as Finland and Norway provide religious education curricula devised by educationalists without direct church input.

While it is a positive that the churches did not directly draft the RECS (as they did its predecessor), we are concerned that the main Christian denominations here have been unfairly involved in the preparation of the document. Writing on the Slugger O’Toole website, commentator ‘El Cavador’ notes that while secularist organisations, and spokespersons for non-Christian religions have not been part of the drafting process, the churches retained a formal consultative group with six nominees—three from the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS), three from the Transferors’ Representative Council (TRC)—engaged ‘throughout the process.’ According to El Cavador, members of this consultative group “meet directly with the Chair and Vice-Chair. They provide input. They review the final draft before it proceeds to public consultation. The Minister has stated publicly that he would not put forward a curriculum that lacked their ‘necessary support.’” If the document is to be redrafted, we demand that this formal consultative group of Church representatives be dissolved.