EDUCATIONAL segregation curtails contact, communication and mutual understanding, the University of Limerick president told a group of new graduates in Northern Ireland yesterday.
Accepting an Honorary Doctorate of Science awarded by the University of Ulster, Dr Edward Walsh said it was the duty of the education system to "assist the triumph of rational and civilised behaviour over the examples of brutal thuggery we find in our community".
When the University of Limerick was founded in the early 1970s the traditional ban on enrolment by Catholics in Trinity College Dublin had already disappeared, said Dr Walsh.
"Better-educated Catholics recognised the nonsense of educational segregation and ignored the ban," he said. "Nearly 30 years later this past is all but forgotten and it is hard to believe that such a ban could have existed or that rational people would have paid any attention to it."
Dr Walsh's citation described him as a "visionary who delivers his vision" and commended him for founding the "first new university in the history of the Irish State", which boasts a 9,000-strong student body.