Michael McDowell: Profound issues at stake over free speech and Islam
Should Ireland pursue French policy of ‘laïcisme’ or simple pluralism?

Pedestrians pass a poster depicting French teacher Samuel Paty placed in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 30kms northwest of Paris following the decapitation of the teacher. Photograph: Thomas Coex/Getty Images
Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief to all citizens and provides that the State will not endow any particular religion.
In the 1960s our Supreme Court developed a theory that the Constitution guaranteed unenumerated rights to citizens in addition to those rights explicitly mentioned in the 1937 text.