Sir, – With regard to Paula Kearns assertion (Letters, November 24th) that the Church of Ireland community holds a "privileged" position in primary education due to making up 2.7 per cent of the population yet just under 6 per cent of national schools, it appears the writer mistakes the relatively unique demographics of suburban south Dublin in attempting to decry Protestant schooling on a national level.
She overlooks two major points: The first is the historical responsibility of the State towards its Protestant minority. But guarantees provided in the wake of the free education scheme of the 1960s were partially ended by the last Fianna Fáil government whose reaction to economic disaster was to remove the ancillary grant that many of our secondary schools depended on to cater for a geographically dispersed community.
This also leads into my second point. Protestant national schools are more numerous throughout the country in relative terms, for the same thinly spread population that requires boarding at our secondary schools also requires more coverage from small primary schools.
The skewed result of a population fall of a minority community that was once 10 per cent of the country should also be taken into account.
To use this as a stick to beat Irish Protestant national schooling appears especially shortsighted.
It would be a bitter irony if advocated reforms to education to benefit new minorities came at the expense of one that has, in reality, hardly benefited from the historic platitudes heaped on it by a state advocating peace and reconciliation.
– Yours, etc,
MATT RUTHERFORD
Raphoe,
Co Donegal.