Sir, - May I add my own voice to those of John Colgan (June 12th) and Paul O'Shea (June 6th) in calling for greater debate of Church/State relations in the sphere of education in the Irish Republic.
I do so specifically because of my experience as a Labour candidate in the recent Talks and Forum elections in Northern Ireland where, time and again, church control of many areas of southern Irish public life came up for discussion with voters. Indeed, I would say that many northerners have a greater awareness of the Republic's Minister for Education's plans to entrench church control than do their southern counterparts.
Many expressed to me their dismay and distaste that a Labour minister intends to copperfasten a situation whereby one cannot become a teacher in the Republic without (a) attending a denominationally controlled teacher training college and (b) obtaining a diploma in religious instruction as well as a teaching degree. Thus, the amazing situation will be perpetuated whereby all taxpayers, of every faith and none, wholly fund both the training colleges and teachers' salaries, yet ownership, control and what passes for accountability resides solely with unelected bishops who, in effect, oblige teachers to become missionary agents in the classroom.
Even more amazingly, another Labour minister (for Equality and Law Reform no less!) intends introducing provisions this year allowing the bishops exemption from anti religious discrimination legislation in the matter of teacher (i.e. public service) employment. In other words, the bishops can have their cake and eat it too, waited upon by the State.
In view of what John Colgan has rightly termed the failure of the serious national media to provide a platform to create public awareness of these developments", I intend having them raised at an opportune juncture of the Northern Ireland Forum's deliberations by the Labour delegation, appropriately. -
Yours, etc.,
(Labour candidate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone,
34 Wheat fields Court,
Dublin 22.