Madam, – The juxtaposition of the banking crisis and the Cloyne report in your Letters page is apt. The Irish public, and parents in particular, should take a leaf from the stockbrokers who want nothing to do with Anglo Irish Bank, according to your business and finance correspondents. This is called facing reality.
It is time the nation faced the reality of how deplorably disastrous it was always going to be to have the vast majority of our primary education system under the management of a celibate clergy, with its tendency to attract some members whose attitude to children is unwholesome and with all the rest, by definition, cut off from the balancing influence of female companionship and the essential edifying experience for educators that can only be gained by at least the possibility of having offspring of their own. – Yours, etc,