Ireland’s Equality Minister promises protection for gay employees
Ireland’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has said schools and hospitals will no longer be able to discriminate against gay staff.
Following the landslide victory for same-sex marriage in the Republic of Ireland, the Equality Minister said he was working to repeal a section of the Employment Equality Act that gives exemption to religious-based organisations.
Mr Ó Ríordáin told the Irish Times: “Effectively you have a situation where an awful lot of teachers in primary and secondary schools would have voted Yes on Friday, would have gone out and celebrated over the weekend, possibly went back into their staff rooms on Monday morning and didn’t tell anybody what they were up to because they felt it would impact on their promotion prospects in the school.
However, John Murray of the conservative Catholic Iona Institute said it was unnecessary.
He said: “I’m involved in education for the last 30 years and I’m not aware that there’s a major problem about this, in terms of people being sacked or people losing their jobs or people not being able to do their jobs. It simply isn’t true.”
Mr Ó Ríordáin made headlines for his enthusiastic tweet on the day of the marriage referdum, in which he declared “Ireland has said f*** YEAH“.
