On Saturday, tens of thousands of people will fill the streets of Dublin celebrating Pride. We will be celebrating marriage equality, the belated apology for criminalisation, the role the LGBTQ+ community continues to play in driving progressive change, illustrated by the 91% who voted for repeal. Pride will also be a protest for trans healthcare, for the immediate roll-out of pre-exposure prophylaxis, PrEP, by the HSE, for action to ensure all families can be recognised as such on their children’s birth certificates.

I will focus on the thousands who will be carrying placards saying "Teach don’t preach, don’t block the sex ed Bill." In most of our schools right now LGBTQ+ people are erased. Their sexual health and relationships do not feature. What is provided is heteronormative and gender normative sex education where only reproductive intercourse is mentioned and where trans people and non-binary people simply do not exist.

We have been inundated with school students contacting us about their inadequate sex education. Courtney told us that her education "only focused on heterosexual relationships. They mentioned bisexuals once when they asked did we think they were greedy." Eighty seven per cent of school students surveyed felt that LGBTQ+ relationships were not discussed sufficiently in their RSE. That is because of an outdated curriculum but fundamentally it is because of church control of our schools, and the religious ethos of those schools taking precedence over the rights of students to have access to necessary information. That religious ethos provision in the Education Act 1998 will stand in the way of even the best curriculum in the world being delivered to school students. It is yet another illustration of why we need separation of church and State.

The impact of this on the mental health of young people is obvious. Where they are erased or othered, it contributes to an atmosphere where bullying is more likely, where young people feel pressured to hide their identity and, shockingly, according to one study, where one in three young LGBT people has attempted to take their life. We need factual progressive sex education, which is LGBTQ+ positive, not gender normative and which centres consent. That is what the Citizens' Assembly called for. It is what the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution recommended and the Dáil voted for in April when it passed Second Stage of the Objective Sex Education Bill 2018. Crucially, that Bill would amend the Education Act to ensure that it would be delivered regardless of the religious ethos of the school. Despite that vote, however, we have a problem. The Ceann Comhairle has decided that the Bill would require incidental expenses and, therefore, to proceed to Committee Stage, we need the Taoiseach to sign a money message. I presume he will be there on Saturday. Will he be able to tell the crowd that he is allowing this Bill to continue to Committee Stage so that we can have necessary LGBTQ+ positive sex education in our schools, or will he have to explain why he is undemocratically using a money message to block the Bill and standing in the way of the change we need?

I reassure the Deputy that far from standing in the way of change once again the Government is making change happen. This is an important matter, which we broadly agree on. We agree on the importance of our children and young people receiving age appropriate, up-to-date information relating to their sexual health. The question is how we best go about making that change happen. Is it through the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, which we have used for decades to set curriculums for subjects, or through primary legislation? We do not have primary legislation saying what should be on the history, physics or mathematics curricula. Primary legislation is not the correct approach to changing a school curriculum. It is best done the way we have been doing it successfully for decades, through the NCCA.

We have asked for a major review of relationship and sexuality education and this is under way. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, announced it last April. As some aspects of the curriculum are 20 years old, we believe that now is the time to carry out a major reform. On its content, the Minister has specifically tasked the NCCA with considering a few areas in conducting its evaluation. These include: consent, which is so important and widely discussed now, what it means and its importance; developments in contraception; healthy positive sexual expression and relationships; the safe use of the Internet for all sorts of reasons that we understand; social media and its effect on relationships and self-esteem; and LGBTQ+ issues. The NCCA has been asked to do that to ensure that we have a modern curriculum and that we can make these reforms and implement them in schools. I strongly believe this is the right approach. This is the way we should make change happen and we should not start legislating for curricula in our schools. That is a different approach and a rather sinister one that does not tend to happen in democratic countries.

That is disappointing and extremely disingenuous because the Taoiseach knows that the Bill that passed Second Stage with his Government's agreement does not prescribe a curriculum. It does not have any intention of doing so. It sets out some extremely broad headings. In particular, what it does, and what the approach that the Taoiseach is outlining will not do, is amend sections 9(d) and 15(2)(b) of the Education Act 1998 to deal with the issue of religious ethos. Does the Taoiseach not accept that it is possible to have the best curriculum in the world but because of the characteristic spirit of the schools and how that is protected by the Education Act 1998 they are under no obligation to teach it? A student in a maths class is not prevented from learning multiplication because it is against the school's religion. A student who is LGBTQ+ should have their identity recognised when they go to school, regardless of the religious ethos. Will the Taoiseach please deal with this reality by saying he will sign a simple money message? If he is serious about what he says and if he thinks this is a serious issue, he should accept that we need primary legislation to deal with the issue of religious ethos and I ask him to put his money message where his mouth is.

We did not oppose Solidarity–People Before Profit's Bill because, as is often the custom in the House, if we are broadly supportive of the general approach and the policy principles, we do not seek to divide the House unnecessarily. I do not, however, believe that primary legislation should be used to change the school curriculum or that politicians should legislate to determine a school curriculum. It is best done through the NCCA, as it has been done very successfully in the past.

What about the Education Act 1998?

We are reforming and modernising the RSE curriculum. It will be a new, modern curriculum covering areas that I mentioned earlier such as consent, LGBTQ issues and contraception. We will expect every school in the country to deliver that curriculum just as they do for other subjects regardless of the ethos of that school.

They will not have to teach it.

Schools that want to give other forms of education, such as religious education or faith formation, should do that during a different time of the day.