The Iona Institute, 23 Merrion Square, Dublin (2026)

08/09/2026

Time to repeal the law discriminating against Catholic schools

The Catholic Education Partnership has told the UN that Ireland is discriminating against Catholic schools by forbidding them from admitting Catholic children first if a school is overenrolled. Other faith schools are allowed to favour children from their own religion in the same circumstances.

The CEP made the accusation at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Every few years the Irish Government, plus Irish NGOs, appear before it to report their progress in implementing the UN human rights standards. It is worth that these standards are not legally enforceable and are open to very wide and sometimes controversial interpretation.

This process is part of what is called the ‘Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and it takes place roughly every four to five years.

It is a peer-review process: other countries scrutinise Ireland’s record and can make recommendations to the Irish Government. Ireland is due to undergo its fourth review later in November this year and the CEP’s appearance in Geneva, along with other NGOS, was part of the review process.

As part of the review, CEP made a joint submission together with three international Catholic education organisations, claiming that when it comes to school admissions, there is effectively one rule for Catholic schools in Ireland and another for other denominational schools.

In fact, under the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018, introduced by the then Minister for Education, Richard Bruton, an over-enrolled Catholic primary school cannot give priority to Catholic children, even though it was established to serve Catholic families, first and foremost.

Minority-faith schools, however, may still give preference to children seeking an education in their religious tradition. The Catholic Education Partnership submission describes this as “direct and selective discrimination”.

Over enrollment was very rare even when the law was introduced and falling primary school numbers are likely to make it less common now. At the time the law was passed, accusations were made that Catholic schools operated a “baptism barrier”. That was a very loaded, negative term.

The Irish Constitution recognises the family as the primary and natural educator of the child and gives parents important rights concerning their children’s education, including their religious and moral formation. The CEP submission argues that current policy therefore sits uneasily not only with international protections for parental choice but with Ireland’s own constitutional tradition, in which, as it puts it, “the family is primary and the role of the State is supportive rather than monopolistic.”

The problem becomes particularly obvious when we look at school divestment.

The Government wants more Catholic primary schools to transfer to non-denominational patrons in areas where parents wish for greater choice. Catholic bishops have repeatedly indicated their willingness to cooperate with this process, but the main resistance often comes from parents.

Imagine a town with several Catholic schools. If one or more are divested, Catholic parents will have fewer Catholic schools available. If the remaining Catholic school becomes oversubscribed, it cannot give priority to Catholic families.

That gives Catholic communities a powerful reason to resist divestment. Why agree to surrender one Catholic school when there is no guarantee that Catholic children will be able to obtain places in those that remain?

The CEP submission argues that the 2018 admissions law has therefore become a practical obstacle to divestment. The State urges Catholic patrons to give up schools in the name of greater diversity while simultaneously weakening the ability of Catholic families to access the Catholic schools that remain.

There is an obvious contradiction here. Genuine pluralism should mean more meaningful choices for parents, not fewer. If the State wishes Catholic communities to cooperate in creating greater educational diversity, it should also ensure that families who continue to want a Catholic education can realistically obtain one.

02/09/2026

Irish State discriminating against Catholic schools, UN hears

State-sponsored discrimination against Catholic education in Ireland has been raised with the United Nations. Alan Hynes-Cendrzak of the Catholic Education Partnership highlighted a 2018 law which prevents Catholic primary schools, in cases of oversubscription, from giving priority enrolment to children of their own ethos, but allows it for all other faith schools.
He said the Irish State’s claim to a pluralist education system is false as “its policy has become internally contradictory and has narrowed the real exercise of parental choice while claiming to promote diversity”.

He also noted that the State’s use of the designation “multi-denominational” [i.e., no faith ethos] is ambiguous and may mislead families as to the actual character of such schools.

This affects parental freedom of choice and “the cultural and religious identity of children, including the protections recognised in international human rights law”.

Mr Hynes-Cendrzak recommended that it be affirmed in law, policy and administrative practice that “parents are the primary educators of their children and that the State’s role in education is supportive and facilitative rather than monopolistic”.

01/09/2026

The need to uphold freedom of religion and belief is urgent, according to a UN Special Rapporteur in a message to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a Catholic charity which helps persecuted Christians all over the world. Read more via the link below.

https://ionainstitute.ie/news-roundup/protection-for-freedom-of-religion-urgent-aid-to-the-church-in-need-hears/

28/08/2026

The housewives aren’t so ‘desperate’ after all

The stereotype suggests the housewives are an unhappy bunch. Think of the old hit TV series, ‘Desperate Housewives’. But a new study paints a different picture. Stay-at-home mothers are less likely to suffer from depression or suicidal thoughts, and their use of certain medications and alcohol is also lower than the average.

Here in Ireland, the Government’s recent ‘National Strategy for Women and Girls: Action Plan 2026–2028’ implicitly assumes that staying at home is somehow unfulfilling and that every woman’s dream is to work outside the home. So-called ‘tradwife’ accounts on social media are explicitly targeted as a bad influence.

Data from the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health analysed on behalf of the Institute for Family Studies in America presents a different picture.

The report author, Stephen Cranney, a data scientist with the Catholic University of America, looked at data covering adults aged 18 to 49 between 2021 and 2024. Stay-at-home parents were defined as those who said they were “keeping house full-time” and had at least one child under 18 living at home.

About 10pc of stay-at-home mothers experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year, compared with around 15pc of other women. In other words, stay-at-home mothers were only about two-thirds as likely as other women to have suffered a major depressive episode.

In addition, while 5pc of stay-at-home mothers reported suicidal thoughts in the previous year, the figure rose to 8pc of women who were not stay-at-home mothers.

The differences extend to the use of medication. Some 32pc of stay-at-home mothers had used prescription psychotherapeutic medication during the previous year, compared with 38pc of other women. This broad category includes pain relievers, tranquillisers, stimulants and sedatives, whether taken according to prescription or misused.

Across these measures, therefore, the familiar picture of the depressed, overmedicated housewife does not stand up to the evidence. This does not mean that every stay-at-home mother is happy, nor that working outside the home is somehow bad for women. The study itself stresses that the comparison group includes full-time and part-time workers, students and unemployed women, rather than career women alone.

But it does raise an important question. If women who stay at home with their children tend to suffer from somewhere fewer mental health problems than other women, then why is their choice still so often deprecated and portrayed as inherently unfulfilling?

25/08/2026

Why secular Ireland shouldn’t celebrate the fall in baptisms

Last week The Iona Institute published a widely covered briefing note called ‘Baptism Trends in Ireland’. What grabbed the headlines was the dramatic finding that the number of Catholic baptisms has fallen by 30pc in the last ten years. But when you think about it, is the figure so surprising? Over the same period, births have fallen by almost 20pc and the country has become more secular. If we had tracked baptism figures for other Churches, we would probably have found a very similar drop.

Our paper put the split between the two causes of falling baptisms, namely the decline in births combined with rising secularism at roughly 60/40.

If we were to repeat this exercise in another ten years, it’s likely we will record a similar drop. Our briefing note looked mainly at Census data from 2016 and 2022. We noted that the number of children aged 0-4 who were marked down as Catholic fell in those years from 78.3pc to 65.4pc of the total, while the number marked down as having no religion rose from 9.2pc to 15.6pc.

By the time Census 2027 comes out we will probably see a further big increase in the number of children (and their mothers) in the ‘no religion’ category.

But we will also see a decrease in the number of 0-4-year-olds, full stop. Between Census 2016 and Census 2022, the number in this age group fell by 37,215 from 330,012 to 292,797.

In fact, new population statistics from the CSO published today show the number is down a further 2,700. The drop would certainly be more were it not for high immigration, including from Ukraine. The effect on Ireland of high immigration is another story.

As you would expect, the fall in baptisms varies by diocese. Whereas they fell by 30pc across the whole island, they dropped by 40pc in Dublin archdiocese, but actually rose by 0.9pc in Elphin diocese, which covers mainly Roscommon. The average fall was in the 20pc-30pc range.

Something else to be noted is that almost all mothers in the age group 25-39 who identified as Catholic in Census 2022 appear to have had their children baptised. Just under 68pc of this group of mothers said they were Catholic, and 65.4pc of children aged 0-4 were marked down as Catholic, which is an almost one-for-one match.

Obviously only a minority of those mothers would be regular Mass-goers, meaning that most of them fall into the ‘cultural’ or ‘a la carte’ Catholic mould.

As we say in the paper, a lot of these Catholics would have had their wedding ceremonies in hotels, but then later had their children baptised, followed by receiving First Holy Communion and Confirmation. People are contradictory and don’t fall into easy categories.

This probably frustrates both The Iona Institute and Atheist Ireland. Why can’t people who say they’re Christian tick all Christian practice boxes, and why do people, who are mostly secular in many ways, still go in for the sacraments and identify as Catholic, or Christian, as the case may be?

Going forward, my guess is that cultural Catholicism in Ireland will remain quite strong in its own peculiar way, at least for another couple of decades. A lot of parents who don’t practice will continue to have their children baptised and receive other sacraments. We can surmise this because around 40,000 children are still baptised into the Catholic Church in Britain each year. Britain has a roughly similar-sized Catholic population to the island of Ireland, but low levels of practice. So cultural Catholicism remains fairly strong in Britain.

If you are secular, does the 30pc fall in baptisms in the last decade mean you should break out the bubbly? I don’t think so because, as mentioned, the main factor dragging down the figure is the falling birth rate.

Those new CSO population figures mentioned above show that the number of children under one in the Republic has fallen from 75,000 in 2010, to 55,000 in 2026. That is quite a drop, and with a fertility rate of just 1.5 the only way is down unless even more immigrants arrive and those immigrants have lots of children.

But because many of those immigrants are coming from countries like Brazil and India, it seems unlikely they will have plenty of children because at around 1.63 the fertility rate in Brazil is now far below replacement level, and India’s has fallen a bit below at 1.9. Notably, it has dropped to around 1.5 among middle class Indians, which is mainly the group coming here.

The falling birth rate has multiple causes but one of them is growing secularism. Religious people still have more children than secular people. You would be hard pressed to find a country which has bucked this trend.

Some people might celebrate the fact that we don’t have as many babies on average as we once did, but once fertility rates far well below the replacement level of 2.1, then alarm bells ought to start ringing. Do we really want to live in a country with a lot more retired people than children, because that is where we’re headed, even with high immigration, according to CSO projections.

The fact is that the falling number of baptisms is a symptom of a society where, for various reasons, people are having far fewer children, full stop, and it’s hard to see how this is a cause for celebration, even for the most secular-minded.

18/08/2026

Catholic baptisms in Ireland drop 30pc in ten years

Decline driven by falling births and secularisation

August 18, 2026 – A new briefing note from The Iona Institute, based on data from almost every Catholic diocese on the island of Ireland (see table in notes) has found that over the past 10 years, the number of baptisms taking place annually has fallen by 30pc.

The research finds that the two big drivers of the decline are falling births, and rising secularism. Falling births account for about 60pc of the decline with the rest accounted for by secularisation.

In the same ten years during which baptisms have fallen by 30pc, births on the island have fallen by 18.8pc. They have dropped by 17.9pc in the Republic and 21.3pc in the North.

Census data from the CSO allows us to look at the religion of mothers and children. In 2016, 78.3pc of 0-4-year-olds were marked down in the Census as Catholic, and 9.2pc were recorded as having no religion.

By 2022, these figures had changed to 65.4pc and 15.6pc respectively.

When we look at the mothers of these children, the same pattern emerges, that is 67.9pc marked themselves down as Catholic, and 15.7pc as having no religion in 2022.

It appears from Census data that almost all mothers of 0-4 years-olds who identify as Catholic are still having their children baptised.

This indicates that ‘cultural Catholicism’ remains a big factor in Irish life.

We can also see from the baptism figures obtained that there is considerable regional variation in the trend. Dublin archdiocese has seen a 40pc fall in the last ten years, whereas in Kerry diocese the fall has been 22.3pc.

Down & Connor, which contains the city of Belfast, has also recorded a big fall, as has Meath diocese, which largely covers Co Meath and Co Westmeath.

Notably, Dublin has seen its birth rate fall by more than the national average, and Dublin is also more secular than the national average.

Commenting on the figures, Dr Tom Finegan, Chairman of The Iona Institute said: “In a way the figures are not a surprise given the rapidly falling number of births and growing secularisation. Given that births have fallen by almost a fifth in the last ten years, and more people are ticking the ‘No Religion’ box in the Census, we could expect nothing but a big drop in baptism figures”.

He continued: “However, the figures also show that ‘cultural Catholicism’ remains strong on the island. We see that as at Census 2022, 67.9pc of mothers with children aged 0-4 still identified as Catholic, even though a big majority of these would not be regular Mass-goers.”

Dr Finegan said: “It remains to be seen whether cultural Catholicism will remain a force in Irish life. It’s worth noting that in Britain in 2023, according to the Vatican yearbook, over 42,000 Catholic children were baptised, even though levels of Mass-attendance in Britain are low.”

He concluded: “The fall in baptisms must be seen not simply as the result of secularisation, but even more as a result of falling births. Ireland’s fertility rate is now just 1.5, well below the replacement level of 2.1. This should be of concern to everyone, regardless of religious belief”.

17/08/2026

The multiple causes of falling fertility rates

An important new study explores the causes of falling birth rates and unsurprisingly finds multiple causes but with the decline of marriage and intimate relationships playing a big part.

The author, Tomáš Sobotka, is deputy director of the Vienna Institute of Demography and an internationally recognised expert on fertility and family change. He describes the present fall in fertility as unusually widespread, deep and persistent. He says the fall has been deeper and fasted than anticipated. Ireland’s fertility rate is now 1.5, well below replacement level.

There is no single cause. Instead, several economic, social and cultural trends are working together. One of the most important is the growing number of young adults who are not marrying or forming intimate relationships. This “relationship recession” is contributing directly to fewer births.

Growing numbers of people in their twenties, thirties and forties are not in a romantic relationship or married. Since most children are born within stable relationships, this inevitably affects birth rates.

Deliberately choosing not to have kids has also become more common and socially acceptable. The traditional expectation that most people will eventually be parents is weakening, while more young adults are uncertain whether they want children at all.

Postponing parenthood creates a further difficulty. As more couples delay trying for a child until their mid-thirties or later, more will experience age-related infertility. Assisted reproduction cannot fully compensate for the loss of the reproductive years.

Digital technology may also be changing relationships. Studies suggest that increased internet use is associated with less face-to-face socialising and fewer intimate relationships. Sobotka warns that the wider adoption of AI may bring further disruption to employment, social relations and family life.

One recent analysis cited in the paper points to young people’s “crushing sense that the future is too uncertain” for the lifelong commitment of parenthood.

Economic uncertainty is also part of the fertility decline. People who are worried about employment or income are more likely to postpone major life decisions, including marriage and parenthood. Yet economics cannot explain everything: birth rates have often failed to recover even during periods of economic growth and falling unemployment.

Housing costs also matter, although their effects are not always straightforward. High rents and unaffordable homes can delay family formation. On the other hand, rising property values may encourage births among homeowners by making them feel wealthier and more financially secure.

Expectations about the future are equally important. Anxiety about war, political instability, inequality or climate change can reduce both the desire and the intention to have children. The study describes a broader crisis of confidence among young adults, many of whom doubt that their children would enjoy a better life than they have.

Fertility also tends to fall when women, especially those who are educated and employed, experience inequality within the home, according to the paper. If women have the same responsibilities as men at work but continue to perform most childcare and household tasks, marriage and motherhood can become less attractive.

Sobotka’s study is therefore sceptical about policies designed to increase fertility. Financial incentives may help at the margins, but they cannot by themselves provide affordable housing, secure employment, equal relationships or a suitable partner with whom to start a family.

13/08/2026

‘Assisted dying’ legislation recedes into distance for now

Proponents of assisted su***de believe the Government is ducking the issue and will not legislate for it in the current Dáil.

In 2024, just a few months before the last General Election, a Special Oireachtas Joint Committee called for the Government to bring forward legislation for TDs to scrutinise.

Two years on, former People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny, who was an advocate of assisted su***de but lost his seat in the last election, said he does not believe the Government has any interest in the topic.

“I just don’t see this Government legislating for assisted dying,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.

His comments follow confirmation from Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan that “no decision” has been taken on the matter. He has described such a bill as “very complex”, adding that it would require careful consideration of medical, ethical, and cultural issues.

Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane, who was a member of the committee that backed change, hit out at the lack of action, claiming the Government are “avoiding the issue”.

10/08/2026

The Government’s plan to limit women’s opportunities

In computer game parlance there are ‘player characters’ and ‘non-player-characters’. The former are controlled by the humans playing the game, and the latter by the computer itself. The NPCs, in other words, do not control themselves.

The terminology easily translates into politics. There are government ministers who are player characters and ones who are NPCs. The ‘player characters’ impose their own agenda on whatever department they are running and if need be, will have showdowns with their civil servants.

The ‘NPC’ ministers do not impose their agenda, because often they have none. Instead, they allow their agenda to be set by their civil servants, maybe by their special advisors, and perhaps by outside NGOs as well.

Alas, Norma Foley, the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality, seems to fall into the NPC category and we had a good demonstration of why this week when she launched something called the ‘National Strategy for Women and Girls: Action Plan 2026-2028’.

The Strategy is a follow-up to the ‘National Strategy for Women and Girls 2025-2030’.

Both documents are partly the work of the National Women’s Council, and it shows. This is the same organisation that pushed on the Government the disastrous referendum of 2024 which proposed to remove the reference to the mother-in-the-home from the Constitution and replace it with a generic reference to ‘carers’. This was voted down by a resounding three-to-one margin.

On that same day, another referendum to include the very nebulous term ‘durable relationships’ in the Constitution was also shot down by two-to-one.

Both of these referendums were proposed while Roderic O’Gorman, now Green Party leader, occupied Norma Foley’s current post.

You would think those massive defeats would have chastened the Department a little and made it a bit wary of the National Women’s Council. But no, the ideology behind the referendums remains intact and is operating at full force in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality. The ideology in this case insists that deep down all women are basically the same and share the same dream. That dream is to have a fulfilling career. Any children they may have must be fitted in around that dream.

Indeed, the ideology insists not only that all women are basically the same, but that men and women are too. ‘Gender’, according to this ideology, is purely a social construct. That is to say, men and women only seem different because of how society forms us and gives us different expectations, for example, that women will mainly be carers and that men will mainly be in full-time paid work.

Educate us in the same way, and we will have identical expectations, says this theory, and it is why the National Strategy has the ‘patriarchy’ firmly in its sights. As it says: “Patriarchal norms, often focused on men as decision-makers and breadwinners and on women as carers, uphold harmful stereotypes and limit life opportunities, preventing women from pursuing particular career paths and economic opportunities and inhibiting men’s likelihood of engaging in caring roles for their children or dependants.”

For this reason, the ‘patriarchy’ must be demolished, starting in schools and via public education campaigns.

It also explains why the strategy has ‘tradwives’ in its sights. No girl must be permitted to aspire towards a life focused mainly on the home and not work.

The career woman, on the other hand, must be put on a pedestal. The social engineering could not be more blatant. The Strategy denounces society for moulding men and women in a particular way and then attempts to do precisely the same thing, except in this case by elevating the paid workplace far above the home. (We do get a passing reference to more workplace flexibility, but not much else on this score).

The best way to counter this strategy is to attack its underlying premise—that gender is strictly a social construct and that life choices result entirely from conditioning

One good place to look is Sweden where National Women’s Council-type thinking has dominated public policy and education for decades. In Sweden, has the gender pay gap been eliminated at long last? No, it has not. In fact, at 11.2pc, it is higher than in Ireland, where it is 8.3pc (which is lower than the EU average).

Why does the pay gap continue to exist? One reason is that Swedish women, like Irish women, are more drawn to part-time work and, crucially, to jobs that do not earn as much money on average as the some of the higher paid jobs men are still more likely to do (such as software engineering).

Sweden women remain far more likely than men to be found in what are broadly called ‘caring’ occupations such as teaching, nursing, child-care, elder-care and so on.

Men are still far more likely to be found in jobs that involve working with ‘things’, like engineering and truck-driving.

If, after all these years, Sweden’s feminist-dominated education system still hasn’t managed to eliminate the gender pay gap, or the fact that women are more likely to do part-time jobs, or that they are still much more likely to be the caring professions, then perhaps there really are natural differences between the sexes that can never be finally erased.

Instead of forcing men and women into a uniform, career-dominated mould that treats the home as an afterthought, the Norma Foley-fronted National Strategy for Women and Girls should value domestic and professional life equally. A better approach would respect the individual choices men and women make regarding their ideal work-life balance and not choose sides.

If the end result is that a residual gender pay gap remains, that women are still more likely to be in part-time work, and in the caring professions, and even (God forbid), at home with their children, then so be it. It is not the job of the Government to force women, or men, into roles they do not want.

But if the Government does think that this is its job, then it will be the Government, and not the ‘patriarchy’ that is seeking to limit our “life opportunities”, and by deliberate design. Is this really what Norma Foley wants?

29/07/2026

Amnesty regrets calling British bishops “anti-rights” group

Amnesty International UK has expressed regret for calling the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales an “anti-rights” organization in a report on women and trans rights.

The report, titled A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK, was published last week and immediately caused a furor as it also targeted a sexual violence support center set up by Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, because Rowling does not believe men who self-identify as women should be allowed to use women-only spaces.

The report listed 117 organizations it said were working to ‘undermine’ the rights of women and LGBT+ people.

This included the bishops’ conference, Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the Evangelical Alliance UK, the Christian Institute, Christian Concern, and the Catholic Herald newspaper. The report called for the charity status of many of the organizations to be reviewed.

Amnesty International UK has now said the report was uploaded without the usual checks and that it had been temporarily withdrawn. However, it issued a very similar report last year, albeit with a smaller number of organizations on its hit-list.

The Iona Institute

08/09/2026

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