Schools and hospitals will no longer be able to fire gay emp

Coeurdepirate

A motion is underway to make amendments to Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act, which allows certain institutions the right to discriminate positively to protect their ethos, so that “no one will be forced to hide their privates life over fears of going against their employers’ religious ethos,” he told independent.ie.

“Scrapping Section 37 totally would be a constitutional issue and that’s not something the Government is a position to do. Amending it is the best option we have.”

Mr O Riordain said he aims to have the changes through by Easter, September at the latest, and said people had the right to be open about themselves at work.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/bill-to-prevent-sacking-of-gay-teachers-30938317.html

Fantastic news!

lottpaul

This would be a great move but expect the RC church in particular to shout loudly about protecting its ethos etc http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/church-prepared-mount-constitutional-challenge-if-stripped-ethos-rights

In relation to schools amending section 37 will only be effective if laws are put in place - and enforced - to protect LGBT teachers from being targetted by employers. Discrimination could take the form of not being promoted, being allocated consistantly difficult classes etc. I assume similar situations could arise in hospitals etc.
Hopefully Aodhan O Riordain - as a teacher himself - will be aware of such things and make sure they are addressed in legislation.

Annasopra

Lottpaul

We have the laws already! The Employment Equality Act.

lottpaul

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

We have the laws already! The Employment Equality Act.

Perhaps so but from my own experience much of the disrimination against teachers is re promotion within schools, appointment as principals etc. Once a teacher has been appointed it's actually difficult to fire them but there are subtle ways of discriminating nonetheless.
Amending Section 37 will be great but schools and hospitals etc need to be places where staff, pupils, patients etc feel secure and I'm not sure if that can be achieved under current management/ownership/patronage. But thats an issue for another time and place.

L1011

lottpaul wrote: »

Perhaps so but from my own experience much of the disrimination against teachers is re promotion within schools, appointment as principals etc.

Still covered by the Employment Equality Act currently for non-religious institutions and for all recognised forms of discrimination. Removing S.37 is all that is needed.

jobbridge4life

Good news and well overdue. Another step towards removing the state sponsored legitimization of discrimination towards LGBT people.

Ash885

Fantastic news however in schools there is still tremendous underground and hidden homophobia. It's an expected thing in most schools that if a teacher is gay/lesbian that it's not openly discussed which means it can be very hard to define discrimination when it's anti-promoted (if that makes sense).

Hopefully in time that itself will sort itself out.

Ten of Swords

While I would welcome any softening of the rules on section 37 I am somewhat wary as to what the government can realistically achieve here. Seems like Father Drumm is probably going to get his wish,

Irish Times, Jan 21st

Fr Drumm said the church would be “perfectly happy” if the law came into line with an EU employment equality directive, which triggered infringement proceedings against Ireland in 2008. “The European directive fully allows for religious bodies to have particular guarantees concerning employment in regard to upholding the ethos of the school.”

However, “I don’t think anybody is seriously suggesting a complete deletion of section 37 . . . Full deletion of the section will have very serious consequences legally concerning the rights of parents to a particular type of education.”

As the indo article said, the real power behind this law is not the fact that people get fired - they don't - it's the discriminatory hiring and career freezing that do the damage and they don't make headlines like firing a gay teacher would.