Some of the attendees after our public meeting in Cork: 1st March 2025
To promote atheism and reason as the basis of reliable personal worldviews, and to promote ethical secularism and human rights as the framework for governance and public life, through education, media engagement, political lobbying, and community building.
We believe the most reliable way to understand reality and morality is to apply reason to the best available evidence. We also believe life is fairer and richer when we treat each other equally, try to understand our differences, and strive to learn, work, and play together without segregation.
Atheist Ireland is a democratic and successful advocacy group for secularism, rationality, pluralism and human rights.
We are the only national atheist advocacy group to have special consultative status at the United Nations.
We promote atheism and reason over superstition and supernaturalism. We are advocating for a secular society where the Irish State does not support, finance or give special treatment to any religion.
Atheist Ireland is campaigning for secular, inclusive schools, where every child is treated equally, regardless of the religion or beliefs of their families, where no religion is given special privilege. If and when religion is taught, that it is done so objectively and critically. We would be just as opposed to schools promoting atheism, or claiming, as fact, that there were no gods.
Interested in our campaign for secular education in Irish schools?
Visit our education website – Teach Don’t Preach
“This is a Catholic Country”
“Open your own schools”
“Why don’t you send your child/ren to a multi-denominational school?”
“If you don’t believe in god you won’t go to heaven”
Many people hear these statements and others regularly – This is discrimination.
Children have a human right to access their local publicly funded school without religious discrimination. Children also have a right to not attend any course in religious instruction/teaching regardless of whether it is a curriculum subject or a Patron’s programme. Schools claim that the Department of Education has not given them enough funding to supervise children outside the religion class or offer them another subject, notwithstanding the fact that it is a Constitutional condition of state aid to schools.
After many years of challenging the law, both in Ireland and Internationally, Atheist Ireland led a successful public campaign resulting in the repeal of the Blasphemy Law, by referendum in 2018. In 2023 Atheist Ireland made a pledge to the United Nations Human Rights 75 initiative to oppose laws against blasphemy and promote freedom of expression.
We have also helped to normalise the use of the word atheism in public discourse. It is no longer unusual for the Irish media to interview a spokesperson for an atheist advocacy group, and Irish politicians now expect to be lobbied by atheists promoting secular policies.
The European Court has found that indoctrinating children in schools means not respecting their parents’ convictions. The court found that the verb “respect” means more than “acknowledge” or “take into account”. In addition to a primarily negative undertaking, it implies some positive obligation on the part of the State. The term “conviction”, taken on its own, is not synonymous with the words “opinions” and “ideas”. It denotes views that attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.