Why in 2016 is a prayer said at the start of every single Dáil sitting?

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

What will it take to get rid of the prayer, a referendum?

Nothing so drastic; a change in the standing orders of Dail Eireann will do the trick.

Write to your TD and tell him you're pissed off about this. If enough people write to enough TDs the message will get through and at the next revision of the standing orders the prayer requirement will be dropped.

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Will do, I don't pay my taxes for this kind of out and out backward rubbish every single day to be taken at my expense. How they laugh at Healy-Rae for saying Nukes caused climate change and then say a prayer before starting work while at work every day is beyond me.

Yeah, but if you don't contact your TDs about this how are they ever going to know how you feel?

up for anything wrote: »

I don't think ticking the RC box on the census form really equates to a belief in god.

What you think doesn't really matter, though, does it? What matters is what the people ticking the box think.

FWIW, academic social research confirms that a majority of Irish people do believe in God. The European Values Survey, for example, shows that 90% of self-identified Catholics in Ireland believe in God. (The other 10% are a bit anomalous, you might think, but this cuts both ways; nearly half of those who identify as having "no religion" do believe in God.)

But this is not really relevant. It's entirely possible to believe in God, but also t believe that it's inappropriate for the legislature of a pluralist republic to engage in prayer. Even if it's true that a majority of the Irish people believe in God it doesn't follow that a majority favour prayers in Dail Eireann.

For the record, as well as prayers at the start of each day's sitting in Westminster, the Northern Ireland Assembly has a period each day called "prayers" but no prayers are said aloud; the period is used for silent prayer or reflecction. The Scottish Parliament doesn't have daily prayers, but it does have a weekly "Time for Reflection", which is an address to parliament on issues of faith delivered by an invited speaker. Speakers are chosen to represent the balance of religious beliefs according to the Scottish census. There are no prayers in the Welsh Assembly.

Local governments in England and Wales may open their meetings with a prayer, and many do, but there are no hard figures on how many do, and how many do not. Some have a roster of local clergymen who come in to lead the prayer. There have been a couple of court cases about this, but the practice is lawful. Some local governments in Northern Ireland, and a few in the Republic, open their meetings with prayers, but most do not. I don't know if there have been court challenges to the practice.

There are parliamentary prayers in the Australian federal parliament, and in the Parliaments of all Australian states and territories. Canada has daily prayers in the federal parliament, and in most provincial parliaments. In New Zealand there is a daily parliamentary prayer, and frequent but not daily Maori religious observances. South Africa doesn't have prayer, but does have a daily period of silent reflection. In the US, congressional prayers (and congressional chaplains) have already been mentioned; nearly all state legislatures also have daily prayers.

On the European mainland, parliaments mostly don't have prayers (though Finland is an exception; there are weekly parliamentary prayers) but about half of the Parliaments in Europe provide a chapel or prayer room or similar, and in many of these there are regular religious services celebrated. In Norway, Poland and the UK there are parliamentary chaplains; in Norway and the UK they are paid by the taxpayer.