\u201cThey have an educational disadvantage because they don’t get another subject.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, religion is about two hours every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Teaching:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/EJ15FA.jpg\")
Primary school girls. Picture by: Alamy.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Donnelly argued that children who opt out of religion classes should be provided with an alternative curriculum, one that teaches them about belief systems that shape the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could get a subject on human rights or the right to freedom of religion and belief,\u201d she suggested.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich would include learning about religions and beliefs in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Donnelly conceded that more funding is needed and said many more parents would like to opt their children out of religion than do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don’t want their children to be stigmatised, they feel their children will be maybe bullied, they’ll be different,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd especially if you’re in a small rural school and there’s only one or two children that want to get out of the class or get another subject, which is not possible at the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, parents leave their children in the class.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Donnelly also claimed that schools fear that the potential impact of more and more families opting their children out of religion classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know from parents that a lot of the time it is said that they [schools] are afraid that it will snowball if there is another subject or you can get supervision outside the class and that all children, much more than at present, will want to exercise that right,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that will put Catholic denominational education at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd at second level, it is a state course of religion, but it’s not an objective course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Main image: Children play in playground of a Roman Catholic National School with a crucifix as Vatican. Picture by: Richard Wayman\/Alamy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Atheist Ireland has claimed schools are \u201cafraid\u201d to provide children who opt out of religion with an alternative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-411473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}