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IF YOU live long enough, you will encounter the most unlikely ironies. What makes me feel very old indeed is the emergence of the Roman Catholic hierarchy as the champions of (a) pluralism and (b) an ultra-leftist notion of multiculturalism, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE

For most of my life, the Catholic hierarchy defended its dominance of the primary education system on the simple ground that the overwhelming majority of the population of the Republic of Ireland was actively Catholic. It followed that the education system should reflect this weight of numbers. Minorities – essentially Protestants or Jews – could be fobbed off with their own schools. Those with naive belief in the importance of children of different religious and ethical traditions growing up together were probably communists, perverts or idiots and could count themselves lucky to have their children accepted on sufferance in any school.