The Catholic Education Partnership (CEP), working with the Irish Bishops’ Conference, launched Living Love Senior, a new Leaving Cert SPHE/RSE programme for Catholic post-primary schools, in September 2026.
Developed specifically, but not exclusively, for Catholic schools, it meets the requirements of the new SPHE curriculum specification and is true to the Catholic ethos. At its launch, Archbishop Eamon Martin stated that SPHE and RSE “belong intrinsically to the mission of the Catholic school”. (1)
Living Love Senior is welcome and long overdue. It offers an opportunity to begin reversing decades of ideological drift. But will Catholic schools actually use it?
The programme is made up of three modules and 19 units covering human dignity, gender and identity, online safety, resilience, relationships, marriage and family, and decision-making, to name a few.
It is freely available to view online and the religious parts can be removed for use in non-Catholic schools.
On the divisive subject of gender, the programme addresses gender ideology truthfully. It references the Cass Review, which has received little coverage in the Irish media and is not mentioned in any of the other SPHE materials.
It addresses detransition and mental health, states clearly that sex cannot be changed, and teaches young people to treat themselves and others with love, care and respect.
Its account of the human person is biologically, factually, spiritually and religiously true. This programme is honest, respectful and worthy of the teenagers in our schools.
I have a zero-tolerance approach to current SPHE offerings and have exercised my right to opt out for reasons numerous enough to fill a thesis, never mind an article. But even for someone like me, Living Love Senior is acceptable. I would not need to opt out of this.
Over many years, NGOs and special-interest groups such as Belong To and LGBT Ireland have gained enormous influence over curriculum development, while parents and patrons have been bypassed by successive governments and Ministers for Education.
Junior Cycle SPHE is now little more than a short course in queer theory. For Catholic or Christian parents, these ideas are irreconcilable with their beliefs.
The problem now extends far beyond individual subjects. Through Bí Cineálta/Cineáltas, the whole-school ‘anti-bullying’ policy, every school pupil in Ireland has been signed up to the implementation of the National LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Strategy, without this ever receiving the consent of their parents. The ideological capture of our education system is all but complete.
Living Love Senior is a first step in the right direction, giving Catholic schools a way to teach SPHE honestly while remaining true to their ethos.
Catholic secondary schools are generally run by trusts such as CEIST, Le Chéile or the Edmund Rice Schools Trust, which have been entrusted by the bishops with upholding the Catholic ethos.
Many Catholic schools fly Pride and Cineáltas flags, cover their walls with ‘inclusivity’ displays that are anything but Christian, run Belong To’s Stand Up Week and Quality Mark, celebrate Pride events, even use pronouns and so on. They may have the odd school Mass and broadcast morning prayers over the intercom, but what does any of that mean when these same schools promote beliefs that openly taunt Catholic teaching?
Catholics are forced to endure this in schools that claim to uphold their faith. These schools and their trusts need to decide: Catholic ethos or queer theory. It really is one or the other, and right now, it is the other. How much worse would this be if these trusts didn’t exist?
Currently numerous schools use a series of textbooks for SPHE called You’ve Got This! One of the co-authors of this series is a teacher in a CEIST school in Kilkenny. The school’s booklist (2) confirms that it uses these books, which contain extraordinary sexual and ideological content for first to third years. How can CEIST, or any Catholic trust, allow these books in its schools?
The issue is not what an individual teacher believes in private. It is whether the material used to teach SPHE in a Catholic school is consistent with Catholic teaching. If textbooks containing such content are being used, CEIST must explain how this is compatible with the ethos it is charged with upholding and that has been agreed with parents on enrolment. What do these trusts actually do to protect the ethos?
And it is not just textbooks. As I documented previously (3), a Catholic school with the Belong To Quality Mark was selected for government-commissioned LGBTQ+ inclusion research. Any Catholic school or trust that allows Belong To campaigns and similar practices into its schools is failing in its duty to uphold Catholic ethos.
CEP has put an alternative to the existing approach to SPHE on the table.
But the programme is open to any school to use. Could the ETBs adopt it before the Catholic schools for which it was designed? Given the trusts’ remarkable commitment to the prevailing ideologies promoted by Oide, the NCCA and the Department of Education, this is entirely conceivable. ETBs may be more willing to offer an alternative to an SPHE approach that pupils, parents and teachers are totally fed up with and everyone knows that everyone is fed up of it!
Some trusts have presented Living Love Senior at teacher-training events, but as far as I can find, none has publicly welcomed it and committed to using it in their schools.
Following the primary school patronage survey earlier this year, Bishop Nulty said Catholic schools should be “unapologetically Catholic”. Living Love Senior provides a welcome opportunity to begin doing just that.
Dr Niamh Regan is a scientist and career coach based in County Meath. She has a PhD in Chemistry from National University of Ireland, Galway and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Limerick in the Materials and Surfaces Science Institute. She later completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Education, followed by a diploma in Web Applications, and has worked in teaching, lecturing and educational development roles.
She currently runs her own career coaching practice and engages with education from the perspective of a concerned parent. She maintains a strong interest in curriculum, policy and wider developments in the sector. Dr Regan is a mother of one primary school–aged child.
Niamh Regan has written about the Bí Cineálta Programme here.