Publication
The Future is Secular
Online version
Secularism, ownership and public services
The paper argues that secular public services require public ownership and democratic control. It focuses on schools and hospitals that received state funding while remaining under private or religious ownership. The institutional descriptions and legal proposals reflect 2018.
The authors distinguish personal freedom of religion from control of public services by religious bodies. Their stated objective is a system that treats people equally, regardless of faith, class, sex or ethnicity, and bases healthcare on clinical evidence.
Education
The paper describes the ownership and patronage of Irish schools and criticises a choice-based system in which religious and non-religious patrons compete for schools. It argues that this approach is slow, can divide parents and preserves segregation between children.
Its medium-term proposals are:
- Transfer the patronage and ownership of every state-funded school to the state, using compulsory acquisition where necessary.
- Introduce universal management rules for primary and secondary schools.
- Remove religious instruction from primary and secondary schools, while retaining the study of religions as an optional second-level subject.
Shorter-term proposals include removing religious exemptions in sections 12.4 and 37.1 of the Equality Acts, amending section 15 of the Education Act 1998 to require objective and inclusive teaching, and removing religious authority from the governance of state-funded colleges of education.
Healthcare
The healthcare section examines voluntary hospitals and the different forms of religious ownership, trusteeship and governance. It argues that public funding did not always provide public control and that institutional religious principles could affect employment, reproductive care and clinical decisions.
The main proposal is to end the section 38 model and bring all publicly funded hospitals into one public service. This would include voluntary hospitals without religious ownership as well as religious institutions. The paper recognises that transferring complex hospitals, staff and assets would require a substantial planned process.
A three-phase transfer
The proposed transition begins with constitutional change, particularly amendment of Article 44, to support a secular state and reduce legal uncertainty around acquisition.
The second phase would establish a register of privately held land and buildings used for publicly funded education or healthcare. Each institution would receive a funding history, followed by compulsory purchase where more than half of annual funding came from the state. Compensation would be assessed according to the land's existing non-commercial public-service use.
The third phase would create a long-term process for land or buildings originally donated by the state to remain in use for the general public. The paper also calls for assets and liabilities connected with historic institutional abuse to be considered.
Overall finding
The paper concludes that funding without ownership leaves public policy vulnerable to private control. Its preferred settlement is universal, secular education and healthcare delivered through publicly owned institutions with common rules and democratic accountability.
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The PDF is 16 pages and 0.57 MB.