A row has broken out between parents and one of the largest secondary schools in the country over a talk that was given to Sixth Year students yesterday by an anti-abortion organisation.
A number of students at Mounthawk Secondary School in Tralee stayed at home or left the school early yesterday in protest at the talk, which they say only gave one side of the debate around abortion.
The talk took place at the school yesterday afternoon during class time. It was delivered by a group called LifeWorks.
On its website LifeWorks Education Ltd says it is a non-profit organisation, with charitable status pending, that gives free talks to school students on "the value of life". LifeWorks shares a Dublin address with the Pro-life campaign.
A notification given to students earlier this week stated that as part of the school's Relationships and Sexuality Education programme LifeWorks would give students a talk on "the value and dignity of human life".
It said the presentation would include video clips "of real life shared stories re choices made around pregnancy and abortion".
The notification said students could decide whether or not to attend the talk, which took place during school time.
The school has told RTÉ News that the talk was organised as part of the usual yearly programme of Relationships and Sexuality Education that is delivered in the school at senior cycle.
In a statement it said the programme takes place each year at this time of year. It said LifeWorks was endorsed by the schools education trust CEIST as a resource for use in schools. It said the talk did not address the Eighth Amendment.
The school says "notification of the RSE programme was communicated in advance to parents in writing, through the students, as was done for individual talks, and parents and students were offered a choice to participate or not".
However the parents of two students at the school have told RTÉ News that they were not notified directly of the talk or its nature.
On its website Catholic Education an Irish Schools' Trust (CEIST) says LifeWorks delivers "multi-media rich pro-life presentations which are commended for taking a compassionate, balanced and youth-friendly approach".
It says the organisation has visited almost 100 Irish schools over the past four years. CEIST runs 107 Catholic secondary schools around the country, mostly schools linked to the Mercy and Presentation orders.
The Minister for Education recently announced what his Department is calling a major review of Relationships and Sexuality Education in schools. As part of the review the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment has been asked to examine the content of the RSE curriculum, how it is delivered and the "supports which are currently being provided by external providers".
Schools are obliged to teach the RSE curriculum but the school's ethos is allowed to influence how the course content is delivered.
A parent of one Sixth Year student has told RTÉ News that he went to the school to sign out his son who did not wish to attend the talk.
Mercy Mounthawk is the fifth largest secondary school in the country. The Catholic school caters for 1,250 male and female students.
18-year-old Clodagh Thompson, who is a Sixth Year student at the school, told RTÉ News that students had asked for both sides in the debate to be represented, but the school had not agreed to this. Ms Thompson said she had stayed at home yesterday from school because she did not wish to attend the talk.
