Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our visitors and thank them for their comments on the issues of disadvantage and equal opportunities that should be available. We raised these issues during our visit to Belfast.

The church has been very strong in the pastin Ireland but huge changes have taken place. There are now more stakeholders involved in education such as community schools, vocational education schools and so on. What concerns many here are the rationalisations, as Reverend Patton mentioned, but I often think that if something is not broken, there is no reason to try to fix it. In that respect, minority education services are very important in order that all children can be cherished equally. This will be very important when it comes to making major changes in schools, particularly smaller schools.

Reverend Hamilton referred to Catholic girls in rural areas and Protestant boys in urban areas. If we take out the words "rural" and "urban", in the past girls have done very well in education when compared with boys, but perhaps this has not been shown in the levels of attainment, promotion and advancement. In this state there are a large number of female teachers in the primary education system. When it came to the points system for third level education, we devised a system, HPAT, as the procedure to be used where someone wants to study medicine.

There have been arguments for and against that and whether it discriminates against girls and so on. Whether one argues for or against changes to the education system, the bottom line is that the disadvantage exists. My query relates to how the witnesses can deal with that. How can the witnesses involve more people in the way that, for example, the vocational education system or community schools do, more so than in the past, when the church had a strong involvement in education?

I like the concept of shared education, to which the witnesses referred. Will the witnesses explain how they see the roll-out of that proceeding from now on?