Religious education - Church must allow pupils to opt out

With Ireland beset by economic hardship and the ethos of society undergoing enormous change, few topics are more calculated to concentrate the popular mind than the vexed issues of pay and religion.

That twin scenario has been reflected at the annual round of union conferences when teachers got an opportunity to air their grievances and Education Minister Ruairi Quinn was given a rare chance to smooth ruffled feathers and, at the same time, throw down the gauntlet to the Catholic Church, an institution which, if no longer as dominant as it once was, largely through problems of its own making, is still a force to be reckoned with in the realm of education.

With local and European elections looming next month and the Labour party in dire peril, according to opinion polls, the INTO conference in Kilkenny was the ideal setting for Mr Quinn to announce good news on the thorny question of pay. For a change there was a positive response from the floor when he told delegates that progress on equalising pay scales could be made in the near future. In reply, Sheila Nunan, leader of the country’s biggest teacher union, told him she hoped a deal on a new scale for young teachers would be clinched within weeks, but reminded him that what really concerned teachers was the education of young boys and girls.