Ireland’s new coalition looks set for a collision course with the
Catholic Church after agreeing upon a program for government that will
see a raft of liberal social reforms, including proposals on same-sex
marriage and reducing the Church’s influence in education.
The document,
Towards Recovery: Program for a National Government 2011-2016,
also contains an oblique but ominous plan to “regulate” stem cell
research, which some activists are reading as a “green light” for
experimentation with embryos.
The center-right Fine Gael (Irish for Gaelic Nation) and the leftist
Labor Party agreed upon the document after no party won an overall
majority in the February 25 general election.
The plan will see the two
parties take power for the first time in 14 years.
The last time the
parties were in government together, a constitutional referendum
narrowly overturned the country’s ban on divorce.
However, a later
Supreme Court ruling found that the government had misused public funds
to influence the vote in favor of a change.
The new program for government proposes holding a special
constitutional convention to redraft the Irish Constitution, including
plans to introduce same-sex marriage and remove the crime of blasphemy.
Some activists fear that all references to God will also be removed
from the document.
Ireland is in the grip of the worst economic crisis since it won
independence from Britain in 1922.
The outgoing Fianna Fáil (Irish for
Soldiers of Destiny) party, which many people blame for lax financial
regulation, suffered heavy losses, seeing its parliamentary
representation shrink from 78 members to just 20.
The main victor was
Fine Gael, winning a total of 76 seats.
However, Fine Gael fell just
seven seats short of a governing majority, forcing it to coalesce with a
resurgent Labor Party, which was buoyed up by a swing to the left that
brought its representation from 20 to 37 members of parliament.
While
the Fine Gael party is traditionally socially conservative, economic
policy has trumped social issues in the program for government
negotiations.
Labor has been forced to accept unpalatable
fiscally-conservative policies, and in return, Fine Gael has acquiesced
on most of Labor’s liberal-leaning demands on social issues.
The election campaign was dominated by the economy, with little
debate on family and life issues. With unemployment stubbornly resting
at 13.4 percent, many voters concentrated solely on the parties’
economic proposals.
Even the country’s Catholic bishops chose only to
mention the defense of traditional marriage on page 19 of a 24-page
pre-election pastoral letter, while abortion and the right to life were
relegated to page 21 of the document.
But Labor didn’t get everything its own way, at least for now.
The
issue of abortion, which Labor promised to legislate for during the
campaign, has been placed on the back-burner for the time being. An
“expert group” will be established to bring forward proposals on how
the issue should be addressed.
Currently, abortion remains illegal in Ireland. However,
disagreements over a controversial 1992 Supreme Court decision
establishing a right to abortion when the life of the mother is at risk
has never been resolved.
In December 2010, the Strasbourg-based
European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Irish government must
clarify the matter.
Pro-life groups are not mollified by the establishment of the expert
group. Professor William Binchy, legal adviser to the Pro-Life Campaign,
told Catholic World Report, “What we need is not another report
or series of hearings—we need a referendum to restore full legal
protection for the right to life of the unborn while ensuring that
current best medical practice continues in Irish hospitals, where
doctors protect both the life of the mother and the child.”
Binchy
points out that Ireland, one of few countries in the western world
where abortion remains illegal, was recently found by the United Nations
to be the safest country in the world in which to give birth.
John
Smyth, a long-time pro-life lobbyist in the Irish parliament, is also
wary of the expert group.
“It’s obviously welcome that there is no plan
to legalize abortion in the program,” Smyth said.
“But we don’t know
what will come from this so-called ‘expert group,’ or even who will be
represented on it.”
“What happens if that group recommends
abortion legislation? Will the government accept that advice? We need
more clarity on this,” he said.
There’s also precious little
clarity on other bioethical issues in the program for government.
The
document promises to “clarify the law surrounding assisted human
reproduction” and to “regulate” stem cell research. Smyth is nervous of
the words “regulate” and “clarify.”
“We know that Labor is in
favor of destructive embryonic stem-cell research. Fine Gael said before
the election that they were opposed to it. What is the position now,
who has won?” he asked.
Much will depend upon who fills crucial
health-care positions when government jobs are eventually divided
between the governing parties.
A constitutional convention will be
called to bring forward proposals on same-sex marriage.
While the
Constitution does not explicitly define marriage as the union between a
man and a woman, the Supreme Court recently ruled that since the
Constitution was adopted in 1937, the original framers would never have
imagined marriage to be anything else.
According to David Quinn of Iona
Institute, a pro-family think-tank, the constitutional convention
proposals on same-sex marriage will “considerably undermine traditional
marriage.”
“It means the government will be orchestrating a
situation where there is no longer any social institution aimed at
encouraging men and women to raise their children,” Quinn explained.
“Currently opinion polls indicate substantial support for same-sex
marriage, but this support is likely to be soft and much of it would
evaporate when the issue is properly debated.”
In any case, it
might not be all smooth-sailing for liberal reformers, and conflicts
with more-traditional elements within the government are likely to
emerge.
Several prominent Fine Gael legislators have privately expressed
disquiet about proposals to introduce same-sex marriage.
Lucinda
Creighton, the party’s frontbench spokesperson on equality, has gone
public with her defense of traditional marriage, insisting, “I think
marriage is primarily about children, the main purpose being to
propagate and create environment for children to grow up.”
While
Creighton’s party leadership is standing by her, the clamor from gay
lobby groups for Creighton’s dismissal was almost deafening, with Hazel
Cullen, spokesperson for the gay-rights group LGBT Noise, saying, “Ms.
Creighton’s attitude to marriage is, frankly, bizarre in 2011.”
“The
campaign against Lucinda Creighton is a direct attack on free speech,
and is nothing less than an attempt to drive anyone who believes in
traditional marriage out of mainstream politics,” said Dr. John Murray
of the Mater Dei Institute of Education in Dublin.
“Supporters of
same-sex marriage want to ban people stating their belief that children
ideally should have a mother and a father who are married to each other.
They want everyone to regard such a common-sense belief as bigotry.
This agenda is extreme and radical and the vitriolic attacks on Lucinda
Creighton prove this amply.”
Educational policy is also likely to
be a key battleground for the new coalition government. Currently,
Church-run schools and other religious institutions receive special
exemption from employment equality legislation.
The exemptions ensure
that religious groups are free to refuse to employ anyone they believe
could undermine the ethos of that institution.
The new program for
government promises to remove those exemptions.
When the European
Commission sought to challenge the exemptions in 2008, Catholic bishops
united with their Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic counterparts to
counter the move.
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was
forced to remove the proposal under pressure.
Ownership and
management of schools will also prove to be a controversial issue.
During the election, Labor’s education spokesperson, Ruairi Quinn, spoke
about the government seizing the title deeds of some Catholic schools
to create greater diversity in education.
Currently only 3 percent of
Irish primary schools are state-controlled, while the Catholic Church
and other faiths and denominations run the remainder.
The Catholic
bishops have called for more non-religious schools, but how that is to
be achieved is quite a different matter.
The program of government
softens the tone somewhat, speaking of a plan to “negotiate” the
takeover of schools owned by the 18 religious congregations that were
named in the government’s Ryan Report on sexual abuse.
A spokesman
for the congregations refused to comment, but insisted that the
congregations retained all their constitutional rights to private
property.
Several congregations are currently involved in a High Court
challenge to government plans to unilaterally rezone their lands,
dramatically reducing the value of their property and the Church’s
assets.
In a statement congratulating Ireland’s new legislators,
the Irish bishops’ conference, perhaps motivated by the rise of the
left, appeared to harden their commitment to traditional issues.
“Notwithstanding society’s understandable preoccupation with economic
recovery, our obligation to defend the dignity of every human person and
protect the common good must not be forgotten at the present time,” the
statement said.
“Public policy should always support and protect the
common good. Strengthening the family, based on marriage between a man
and a woman, as well as promoting and protecting human life at all its
stages, is fundamental in this regard.”
The bishops do, however,
enter the debate with one hand tied behind their back. More than 15
years of scandal have left many people in the Church exhausted and
bishops’ moral authority diminished.
Some politicians, for their part,
have never missed an opportunity to capitalize on the Church’s
misfortune.
Ireland is undoubtedly in for some bruising battles on
social issues, and the Church will have the difficult task of convincing
the faithful that some things really are more important than the
economy.