HAI attends launch of Government Dialogue process

Along with delegations from the various churches, the HAI attended on 26 February last the launch in Dublin Castle of the new process of dialogue between the Government and churches, philosophical and non-confessional organisations.

This process was announced over two years ago by the Taoiseach in the Dail. It is modelled on a provision in the draft constitutional treaty for the European Union which acknowledging the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, would commit the Union to maintaining an open, transparent and regular dialogue with such organisations.

The next step for us will be a meeting with Ministers and senior civil servants. It is proposed that a bilateral meeting on these lines will take place each year. Our expectation is that at such meetings we will have the opportunity to raise issues of concern where the State and its institutions have the primary responsibility or exert major influence. We expect that between such meetings we will engage with officials in progressing the discussions.

In preparation for the detailed discussions the HAI has drafted a major submission and submitted it to the Department of the Taoiseach . The submission, which can be viewed on our website, deals with constitutional and legislative provisions which particularly affect the non-religious. It also covers a large number of practices which we consider discriminatory. Issues include religious oaths for judges, blasphemy, equality legislation exemptions for religious organisations, the lack of legal status for Humanist weddings, the lack of choice of school, rights of minorities in schools and respect for non-religious people in religion-run hospitals. We are already working on a second edition of the submission and we envisage that this will be an ongoing process as new discriminations come to light and, hopefully, as discriminations are abolished.

The Taoiseach, in his address at the launch, stated that