Referendum result can’t change a school’s ethos

I was appalled at the attitude of Junior Minister, Aodhán O’Riordáin, to changing the laws that preserve the ethos of denominational schools of all religions.

This is the man who once said that civil servants should not give any undue deference to churchmen. His cynical plan is to make inoperable the law that preserves a school ethos. A religious school is morally entitled to staff that supports its values.

All this, one supposes, flows from the recent same-sex marriage referendum, as the minister bemoans the plight of teachers who hide their sexual identities. As a percentage of the population, homosexuals are few.

In England, National Statistics found that 1.5% of the adult population was homosexual (including gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender).

In the US, the Battelle Survey, funded by the US government, found that 1.1% of adult males and 0.4% of females in the United States were homosexual. There seems no reason to consider that Irish statistics would differ from those.

The Government spent €20m in accommodating a small section of the population that was already adequately catered for by the Civil Partnership Act 2010, and ignored all consequences that affect the other 98.5% of the population.

John O’Reilly

Merrion Square

Dublin 2