Want to hold high office? You have to swear an oath to God regardless of what you believe

Rite & Reason: The act of swearing an insincere oath flies in the face of the integrity of the office being assumed

Imagine if you will, just for a moment, that there was something in our Constitution which prevented a gay person from holding high office in this country. I’m talking about becoming president, a member of the Council of State or a judge. There would be outcry and calls for equality – and rightly so. But there is a significant and growing cohort for whom this issue applies in a very real sense: the non-religious community.

The Constitution requires a religious oath to be taken by any person on appointment to these positions of high office. There is no option to affirm as there is in court; a religious oath as set out in the Constitution must be taken.

Over the years the United Nations Human Rights Committee has told Ireland to remove the requirements for these religious oaths. The response by Ireland could more accurately be described as a non-response: Ireland simply ignores it.

In the 2016 census (the analysis of the 2022 census is not yet available) a total of 468,421 people, or 9.8 per cent of the population, indicated “no religion”. How, in all conscience, should any of these people be expected to swear an oath to Almighty God? Surely the very act of swearing an insincere oath to a god you don’t believe in flies in the face of the integrity of the office being assumed? It is, in effect, a lie – a fine way to take up one of the highest offices in the country.

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For many years I served on the board of the Humanist Association of Ireland. Under the Structured Dialogue Process set up during Bertie Ahern’s time as taoiseach we had a number of meetings with the government. The purpose of these meetings was to raise awareness of issues needing to be addressed.

Gone are the days when our leaders had to be white, straight and religious. But we continue to discriminate against non-religious citizens

But no matter how many times we highlighted the issue of religious oaths we got the same treatment as the UN Human Rights Committee: we were ignored.

If it wasn’t so serious you might find it funny. When we told Ahern what we were asking for was equality, he answered that the problem with equality was that if you gave it to one group the others would all want it as well.

The assumption, when the Constitution was drafted in 1937, was that everyone was religious – well, anyone who would aspire to high office in any case. And, of course, there were other assumptions as well – everyone was assumed to be heterosexual and marriages were between men and women and to last a lifetime.

But Irish society started to change and the change happened more rapidly than anyone could have foreseen. Suddenly we had contraception, divorce, abortion, same-sex marriages. But still the assumption remained: everyone was religious and it was all right to require a religious oath for high office.

Over the years I kept a scrapbook of articles and letters to newspapers on this topic. Reading over them now I see a piece I wrote on the 10th anniversary of a plenary meeting of all those taking part in the Structured Dialogue process. The meeting, in May 2011, was chaired by the then taoiseach Enda Kenny and attended by the leaders of all the churches along with members of the government, senior civil servants – and me.

Everyone had their say – and each of them, except me, simply said how nice it was to meet in this forum and how it was a sign of a more inclusive, pluralist Ireland. I felt obliged to make my point and raised the issue of religious oaths.

I asked what would happen if we elected a non-religious president later that year and he or she declined to take up office because of the requirement for a religious oath. The taoiseach’s response was to ask Alan Shatter, then minister for justice, to “take a note of that”. Twelve years later, we’re still holding our breath.

It’s not so farfetched, you know. Gone are the days when our leaders had to be white, straight and religious. But we continue to discriminate against non-religious citizens. Why does our government have a problem addressing this?

I look forward to the census details being released. The 2016 figures for “no religion” showed a rise from 5.9 per cent in 2011 to 9.8 per cent in 2016. The indications are that the increase will continue. But even if it doesn’t – even if it goes backwards, which it almost certainly won’t – it doesn’t make any difference.

The State should respect all its citizens and treat them equally. Previous taoisigh fobbed us off in a dismissive manner. Maybe Taoiseach Leo Varadkar or Tánaiste Micheál Martin will be brave enough to address this important issue: it needs to be done for the integrity of the State.

Brian Whiteside is a humanist and funeral celebrant