We have a new board of management and a new chairman. A lively, young, red-blooded dynamo, he is BIG into technology, has a top-of-the range mobile phone, a personal computer with Internet and scanner and digital camera, a camcorder and a snappy diesel-engine car.

Being so gadget-friendly, he can talk to the children about Jesus or Furby with equal fervour. Trouble is, we, the staff, are pretty laid back and quite unenthusiastic about the great new god, IT. Our coffee breaks are peppered with dissertations on philosophy, poetry, music, art, spirituality, linguistics and the living of life.

Our gleaming new computer, courtesy of Telecom Eireann, had spent an extended incubation period on the staffroom desk. Miss L had played a few games of Freecell and the occasional letter to parents has been laboriously typed with two fingers by a reluctant priomh oide.

You see, ours is a small, rural academy with minimal facilities, where a secretary and a caretaker are unknown quantities and where caring for the academic, religious, emotional, physical and artistic needs of our pupils is of paramount importance.

However, we are resourceful, flexible and open-ended and our new Reverend Chairman is equally amenable, charming and gracious. Like Fianna Fail and the PDs, we have formed a coalition where we are all equal partners and the high moral ground is shared by all.

Our specialist in IT is sharing his knowledge with us poor cave people and, in return, we are sprucing up his Sunday homilies by giving him some splendid religious and biblical anecdotes from our archives which he can use with impunity to impress his congregation.

It's a most pleasant, wholesome, harmonious concordat and both parties are finding it a wonderfully enhancing experience. What an exemplary paradigm for the unification of Church and State.