Dr. Gabrielle Tracy

This is simply saying that between 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock, children should be able to go to school without any discrimination.

And that religion, as we all talk about, religion and politics should never be discussed, as everybody says.

If they were discussed a bit more, maybe there'd be less problems.

But they're personal.

And because they're personal, they should be done in your own personal time, within your own personal community.

Publicly funded schools are not there for that reason.

And teachers are there to teach, not to do the work of the church or parents.

That would be my view.

There's no cultural attack, there's no removing religion from people's lives.

It's simply saying you can still go to church, children can still do their Holy Communion and their Confirmation, as many do.

There's Catholic children who attend Church of Ireland.

I have friends of mine who are Catholic and they attend a Church of Ireland school because it's their local school.

All three of her children did their sacraments outside of the school within the community.

There was no problem.

And they still attended church and they still were still exceptionally good friends.

You know, that's not what this is about.

This is about the isolation and exclusion that children face within 88.5% of the schools that we have in this country.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it is what we have.

And we're outliers across Europe with this.