WHY is the Education Authority (EA) asking teachers if they are loyalist or republican?

The explanation lies with Northern Ireland’s unique laws on ‘political opinion’ – one of our nine equality categories, alongside religion, race, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, disability, and being with or without dependents.

Political opinion was originally intended as a short-hand for unionist or nationalist, so the law made no attempt to define it, creating an almost limitless legal minefield.

The courts have widened it out to mean any subject of public debate or government policy, apart from advocating violence.

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The gay cake case a decade ago demonstrated the implications.

Discrimination was alleged not just against a gay customer but against a customer with an opinion on gay marriage. It could have been any opinion, for or against.

In Britain, the courts have banned political discrimination against people if opinions count as “weighty philosophical beliefs”, but this is an evolution of laws against religious discrimination and sets a much higher bar than the specific law in Northern Ireland.

The EA has now stumbled into this minefield, dragging the Equality Commission with it.

Teachers and applicants for teaching jobs are being asked if they are loyalist, unionist, nationalist or republican and also if their politics are broadly left, centre or right.

This raised eyebrows and attracted criticism when it came to light last week.

The EA responded that it is required by law and Equality Commission guidance to monitor the nine equality categories.

It added that it is having to survey the entire teaching workforce, rather than just new applicants, because teaching was exempt from fair employment law until two years ago to facilitate religious ethos.

It is not quite correct on the monitoring requirements, as some of the equality categories are more equal than others.

Employers must monitor religion and gender by law, but the other seven are optional.

Two of those – political opinion and sexual orientation – are considered sensitive enough to require extra care.

Political opinion has the further problem of being difficult to pin down through standard questions.

This is all acknowledged in the Equality Commission’s guidance. It has tactfully said it will contact the EA “to provide advice on this matter”.

The commission still wants employers to try to record information on political opinion, hence the EA’s confusion.

No individuals would ever be identified by it – a point some of the EA’S critics appear not to realise. Monitoring data is anonymous and only used to analyse trends or flag up problems for entire groups.

However, in explaining this, the commission’s guidance notes the logical conclusion: the mandatory religious background question will cover political opinion in most cases, by serving as a proxy for unionist or nationalist.

An employer only needs to consider a separate question if they think some other “dimension of political opinion” is relevant to the job.

That means the EA has judged a left-leaning or right-leaning teaching workforce to be worth watching out for – a familiar concern in England, but novel here.

It has also decided community background should be monitored beyond the usual binary of unionist or nationalist to include loyalist and republican.

The Education Authority has further opened the door to teachers and applicants for teaching jobs alleging discrimination on grounds of political opinion

Even if this would never identify individuals, it risks politicising public views of the teaching profession.

Survey results will presumably emerge with percentages of loyalists and republicans in staff rooms, or the EA will decline to release this information despite its existence being known. Neither outcome will lower the temperature.

There will certainly be unionist complaints if the profession turns out to be left-leaning, as seems likely.

Monitoring is meant to identify imbalances. What is the correct balance of republicans and loyalists, should left and right always be in balance, and how would any of that be achieved?

Although monitoring occurs under different law to discrimination cases, political opinion is a common concept to both.

So the EA has further opened the door to teachers and applicants for teaching jobs alleging discrimination on grounds of political opinion – potentially, any political opinion.

The best way to clear this minefield is to accept our laws on political opinion are a mistake and move to the system in Britain.

Unfortunately, they are written into the foundations of the Good Friday Agreement and would be almost as hard to unpick as the Human Rights Act. We are stuck with them.

On the plus side, now this has become a political issue in its own right, nobody can deny you employment for any view you hold on it.

You can also have it iced on a cake.

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© The Irish News