Madam, - The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, deserves great credit for his recent speech on the subject of education in the new Ireland.
This speech was given to the NUI convocation at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, on April 10th and was covered in your newspaper on April 11th, under the headline, "Archbishop criticises Catholics who pick schools to avoid diversity".
The Archbishop asks a number of fundamental questions of Catholic parents, as they decide what is best for their child in education. While he rightly defends the importance of parental choice, and the importance of respecting different models of education provision, he deals directly in his speech with the growing problem of segregation within education.
How anyone can describe themselves as Catholic, let alone Christian, while supporting a model of education that implicitly excludes children from a special-needs background, or indeed the children of immigrants, is a really important question that needs to be honestly addressed by Church and State alike. If we allow segregation to take hold within education, the implications for the wider society are colossal.
The bedrock of the Irish education system has always been support for local schools. Traditionally, at primary school level all children from an area attended the local school, helping that school to develop within the wider community. This model of successful education needs to be supported.
When I raised this issue last September, arguing along virtually the same lines as Archbishop Martin, I was publicly denounced by the Irish Catholic. I wonder where that paper stands now, as one of the leading churchmen in the country has so publicly demanded that we confront the issue of educational segregation once and for all.
We should not be afraid of this debate. The role of the church in today's society, in helping to provide an education system that is open to all, is a challenge that Dr Martin has faced in his most reflective comments at Maynooth. I wish others would show similar courage. - Yours, etc,
BRIAN HAYES TD, Fine Gael Education and Science Spokesperson, Leinster House, Dublin 2.