Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 July 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement

Integrated Education in Northern Ireland: Discussion

10:15 am

Photo of Brendan SmithBrendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Apologies for not being able to hear all the contributions but there have been votes and I was in another meeting on the way back. However, I have gone through the documentation. Shared housing and integrated education are contained in one sentence in the Good Friday Agreement but there has not been progress on shared or mixed housing to the extent we would like either. In the early 1990s the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body, of which the Chairman was co-chairman with a member of the British House of Commons, visited Lagan College which was one of the first integrated colleges. A founder member of the Alliance Party was very much to the fore as a champion of integrated education at that time and in 1993 or 1994 a number of us from the Dáil, the Seanad and the British House of Commons visited various educational establishments. We met with unions, management bodies and the governing body of Lagan College, who had a very progressive programme. I see that Ms Scott-Wills taught there

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